Freedom Movements

Jump down to section: Entering Politics; Republican Party       Challenging Jim Crow, Black Laws, The Color Line                The Role of Women; Women's Rights

(Search C-RM and C-RVP or by Grades to locate classroom ready materials, like Grades9-12)

Topics: Religious and social movements for freedom, brotherhood and racial equality; national and international world congresses and associations; Involvement in AME Church, Methodist Ecumenical Conference, First Universal Races Congress, Pan-African Conference and other international conferences.

In An Appeal to the World, (DuBois, ed; NAACP, 1947); Appeal to the United Nations for Redress),  W.E.B.Du Bois states in his Introduction 'Therefore, Peoples of the World, we American Negroes appeal to you; our treatment in America is not merely an internal question of the United States.  It is a basic problem of humanity; of democracy; of discrimination because of race and color; and as such it demands your attention and action.  No nation is so great that the world can afford to let it continue to be deliberately unjust, cruel and unfair toward its own citizens.'  A classroom-ready NCLG slide lesson on Life and Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois is HERE. (C-RM Grades7-16)

Mary Church Terrell was the first black woman to address the 1904 International Congress of Women in Berlin, speaking in French, German and English! She was a graduate of Antioch and Oberlin colleges and throughout her life she advocated for racial uplift first through equality in educational access and then through equal voting rights, and fair legal protection for women. She co-founded the NACW in 1896 and later was a charter member of the NAACP when it was founded in 1909. NCLG offers a slideshow on her life and contributions HERE.   Slideshow C-RM  Grades7-16

Educators Anna Julia Cooper and W.E.B. Du Bois were among several Americans who attended the first Pan-African Conference in London in 1900, which was chaired by Alexander Walters of the AME. She gave one of the few addresses, hers describing the race problem in America. Pan-African Association member and on their executive board. Anna Julia Cooper biographic slideshow by NCLG is HERE.  Slideshow  C-RM  Grades7-16

W. S. Scarborough was one of the Vice Presidents of the National Afro-American Council and speaks of his address to the meeting in Detroit within his Autobiography (p.192, 373). (Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough (Ronnick, ed., Wayne State University Press, 2005). In Chapter XVI (pp.164-184) describes his first whirlwind tour of Europe trip (an interesting travelog with some unfortunate experiences of exclusionary treatment) as a delegate to the Third Methodist Ecumenical Conference during which time US President McKinley died, whom Scarborough had known personally (p.179). In Chapter XIX, he speaks in detail about his second trip abroad, visiting sites in several countries  and going to the First Universal Races Congress, for which Du Bois had invited him to join the US Black Delegation (p.214). Racial representatives from around the world attended the event at the University of London in 1911 to increase racial brotherhood and begin cooperation on real solutions for social issues. (Search for the Autobiography in libraries near you.)

Here is a copy of Du Bois' speech made to the world congress of leaders at the Pan-African Conference.  Du Bois’s remarks were given on July 25, 1900 at the convention meeting site at Westminster Hall in London. It popularized worldwide his phrase the "color line." He called for racial uplift and equality of education and opportunity for all Black peoples.

James William Charles Pennington (October- -, 1808 - October () was born into slavery in Maryland. At 19 he escaped to Pennsylvania and was aided by 2 and began his education with Quaker families. When reached Brooklyn, he worked for a wealthy merchant and used pay to get tutoring. In 5 years he was able to start teaching Black children in Newtown, NY. He soon became part of the Negro National Convention (1829) and later presided over that convention in 1853. A convert to Christianity, he was admitted to Yale (Divinity School) which required a knowledge of Latin and Greek. According to the Yale Report of 1828, ancient languages were continuing as both a prerequisite for admission and part of the core university curriculum. He was ordained and called to churches in Newtown, where he officiated the marriage of Frederick Douglass, and then in Hartford, CT.  While in Hartford, he wrote a Black History, traveled to Jamaica, and was delegate to the Second International Conference on Slavery in London, England and to an International Peace Conference. In his first year at a church in Manhattan in 1848, he was forced to flee to England due to the Fugitive Slave Act. He spoke as an abolitionist there and received an honorary Doctorate from University of Heidelberg. He returned to the US and helped organize a Legal Rights Association in Manhattan. After the Civil War, he served in Mississippi, Maine and Florida aiding emancipated families.

Dr. Susan Maria McKinney Steward (March 7, 1847 - March 17, 1918) was the first female physician graduating from medical school in New York, valedictorian, homeopathic doctor practicing for 48 years, founder of a women’s hospital for African Americans, university physician, army physician, licensed physician in four states, speaker at an international conference. In 1911, she attended the Universal Race Congress in London, where she delivered a paper entitled "Colored American Women". Her paper was focused on the achievements of numerous African American women. The Congress brought together many people from all over the world searching for ways to enhance their lives through global relationships and to continue dialogue between the East and West parts of the world. NCLG offers a full biographic handout for students about Theophilus and Susan Steward HERE.  Handout  C-RM  Grades7-16

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Topics: African Americans entering political movements and parties; Elected officials and party positions; Scarborough, Johnson, Smalls, etc.

Search for African Americans who have held elected political office in federal, state and local positions. NCLG offers a page with a collection of links to entries found in the great resources of BlackPast.org. Open the document and use Control - F, Command - F keystrokes or your browser search tool and search for your state or city. Please share about those you find that are examples of intersections with classical studies or had these interests in their lives. We'll add them to this resource so all can benefit, and we will add you to our list of contributors!

Alexander Lucius Twilight (September 23, 1795 - June 19, 1857) had a career as a trailblazing educator in Vermont and became the first African American to serve in a State Legislature in the US. He graduated from Middlebury College which had a strong classical curriculum and admission requirements of proficiency in Latin and Greek. He became the first African American to graduate from an American College with a B. A. degree. His innovative teaching and strong curriculum made his local school grow to include boarding students from Quebec and New Hampshire. See an NCLG slideshow about his life and impact on advocacy in Vermont for quality education accessible to all. The slides include biographic information and two excellent short videos from the local museum and the Vermont Historical Society. NCLG slideshow, including 2 videos  C-RM  C-RVP  Grades7-16

William Sanders Scarborough was often called upon by mainly Republican political leaders to address the Black population in Ohio, represent African American education on the state level at the Republican State League meetings and the Lincoln Banquet, and network nationally, relaying party information to African Americans. In 1895, The Republican National League Meeting (now The Republican National Convention)  was held in Cleveland, with Ohio Governor McKinley the party favorite. The National Republican League meeting placed Cleveland firmly on the map of partisan politics and ushered in a period of its growing centrality in the political arena. Scarborough speaks of his supportive role and requests for him to write articles and make public addresses.  See: Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough (Ronnick, 2006): Ch. XIII, XVI, XIX, XXV; plus content on pages 74, 150, 157, 214, 217, 224, 282, 285; as well as pages 191, 326, 327-8. 

     Scarborough’s role in the campaigns and support of several US Presidents, Vice Presidents, and Ohio Governors is described extensively in his Autobiography in Chapters IX, XI, and XV, (Campaigns and conventions for Pres. McKinley, Ohio Gov. Foraker, Ohio Sen. John Sherman who was later Pres. McKinley's Secretary of State) and in Chapter XVII (especially p.190-195) and Chapter XVIII (p.202-213) he describes dealings with Vice President Taft and on securing funding from Andrew Carnegie on p. 86-88, p. 154-5. Regarding support of and from (Vice) Presidents Taft, Harrison, Harding, Roosevelt; and Governors Foraker and Herrick, see his accounts in Chapters XXVI-XXVII up to p.306; for President William McKinley, see p. 148.  

The Collected Works of William Sanders Scarborough, Ronnick, ed., 2006, contains no less than 37 articles by Scarborough, printed in regional and national papers and magazines, that express his political views and direct campaigning to African Americans on race issues and candidates. For example, Also included is Scarborough's appeal to Black voters in Cleveland in 1907 to elect Republican candidate Mr. Burton running for election to Congress (p.482). Other topics include the race problem, White vs. Black, the moral of race conflict, Black Laws, federal election law, and English Principle vs. American Prejudice, etc. 

     Scarborough also wrote an interesting Biography of President Harding. It is in the Biographies section, as  #10, p.137-140.  He praised Senator Harding's presidential election slogan "All men up and no man down!" His biography likens Harding's character and goals to Presidents Lincoln, Washington, Grant, Roosevelt, and McKinley. He speaks of his relationship over time with Harding and reflects on his performance, practical wisdom, and humanity. He describes Harding's desires to stamp out lynching and restore full civil rights for Black American citizens who have sacrificed much. His biography clearly indicates the level of his knowledge and acquaintance with the newly elected President. 

    Also included among Scarborough's works is a lengthy speech on Why I am A Republican (p. 11), printed in the Detroit Plaindealer newspaper in 1888 after he delivered it at the Lincoln Club in Columbus, Ohio.

Michele Valerie Ronnick, 2006. “William Sanders Scarborough and the Politics of Classical Education for African Americans,” Chapter in M. Meckler’s (ed.) Classical Antiquity and the Politics of America, Baylor University Press, Waco: p.55–67. Click here to access student reading and discussion questions created by NCLG.  Check here and click Get Book/Find in a Library to see area libraries from which you might get access. 'Although most prevalent and obvious during the early decades of the Republic, the influence of classical antiquity on American politics persists even into the 21st century. This study tracks the movement of classicism throughout U.S. history and illustrates how the ancient Greeks and Romans continue to influence political theory and determine policy in the United States, from the education of the Founders to the War in Iraq.' - publisher. Discussion study guide C-RM Grades9-16

William Henry Johnson; Please see his full entry under our Abolitionists section. He wrote his Autobiography which can be found in the Albany (NY) Public Library, and the New York State Library Archive. I found the Internet Archive site’s own copy easier to read - view HERE. "…[Johnson] mastered writing and oratory and soon became a popular public speaker, author of countless news articles and pamphlets and crafted several important changes to state legislation. He held offices within the New York State Republican Conventions, was the first Black man elected to the NY State Republican Committee and attended several National Republican Conventions (Fremont (Lincoln),Garfield, Harrison, Grant, McKinley). He was the first Black elected ‘Janitor of the State Senate’ and of the ‘High Court of Impeachment’ (with Sargeant at Arms of Senate and Court of Appeals). He also held the highest Masonic rank, working to dissolve the Color Line among Masons. He achieved most all of the repeals of racial discrimination in major NY laws, such as repeals of property ownership as a requisite for voting, restrictions on Black military service, unfair segregation and quality of education, and unfair fraud against Blacks by the insurance industry. He chaired the NYS Equal Rights Committee (1866-1873).  C-RM  Grades9-16

Robert Smalls: Emancipation, Reconstruction and Politics.  Excellent biographical notes are offered by the National Park Service. However a good commentary including more (from midpoint to the end) on his desire for personal education and his ground-breaking support of public education and the care he took for the education of his children, locally at the Penn School and at preparatory schools in Massachusetts, is found on this NPS Video (26 min) which is narrated by his great-great grandson Michael Boulware Moore! Pres. Obama dedicated the local sites as a Reconstruction Era National Historical Park in Beaufort, SC. Smalls was of Gullah Geechee South Carolina heritage, born to an enslaved mother on April 5, 1839 on the McKee Plantation in Beaufort. He was not allowed any education. At 12, he was hired out to work in Charleston harbor and married Hannah and had a daughter Elizabeth and a son Robert. Then he was taken on the Plantar, a merchant boat commissioned by the Confederacy. He learned how to pilot the boat and staged a mutinous escape to surrender to the Union Admiral in order to gain freedom for his family and crew. His later help to the Union Navy was a great victory and he was taken to meet Pres. Lincoln and Secy. of War Stanton in Washington to urge Black recruitment (at min 15 in the video) He returned to lead a local regiment and was given a reward, which he used to pay for personal tutors (at 5am and late at night!) and purchased his former enslaver’s McKee plantation home which was on auction. During the Civil War, his daughter attended Penn School at the site of Brick Baptist Church, the first school set up for emancipated children in the South. He supported Penn School, joined the local School Board and after the war he was elected to SC House and Senate where he wrote legislation requiring the first state-wide public education system for ALL children. He founded the SC Republican Party and later served a record-breaking five terms in the US Congress. He died February 23, 1915.  C-RM  Grades7-16

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Topics: Segregation and the color line had a deep seated power, creating a ceiling over any ‘racial uplift’ with respect to education, social and political life; Graduates with professional training faced exclusion from advancement and suppression of recognition

As a means to overcome exclusion and suppression of new and outstanding scholarship and achievement, the ANA was formed, which was to function something like the APA or MLA. It was a new African American Academy or society to disseminate the scholarly work of African Americans studying, researching and writing in Classical and Liberal Arts. It held annual meetings from 1897-1928 with full day schedules of addresses and papers presented. It published a journal Occasional Papers. The 18 founding ANA members were well-known authors, scholars, and artists. The first meeting on March 5, 1897 included at least these: Blanche K. Bruce, Levi J. Coppin, William H. Crogman, John Wesley Cromwell, Dr. Alexander Crummell, W.E.B Du Bois, a co-founder in 1909 of the NAACP, Paul Laurence Dunbar, William H. Ferris, Francis J. Grimké, Benjamin F. Lee, Kelly Miller, William S. Scarborough, John H. Smythe, Theophilus G. Steward, T. McCants Stewart, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, Robert Heberton Terrell, Richard R. Wright  Other known members include: Orishatukeh Faduma, George Washington Henderson, John Hope, President of Morehouse College and Atlanta University, James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, Robert Pelham Jr., Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, founder of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Carter G. Woodson, Monroe Work, and Robert Tecumtha Browne. (Links go to biographic articles; many are included elsehere in this resource depending on their particular connection to classical studies)

NCLG resource page for ten of W.E.B. Du Bois many relevant books and essays: Click here for our NCLG resource page  to access information on these works of W.E.B. Du Bois with overviews on each book and methods of free, digital or library links.

     The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century; The Essential Early Essays,  W. E. B. Du Bois, Fordham University Press; N.D. Chandler, ed., 2014. “Early essays from the sociologist, displaying the beginnings of his views on politics, society, and Black Americans’ status in the United States. This volume assembles essential essays, some published only posthumously, others obscure, another only recently translated by W. E. B. Du Bois, spanning from 1894 to early 1906. They show the first formulations of some of his most famous ideas, namely, “the veil,” “double-consciousness,” and the “problem of the color line.” Moreover, the deep historical sense of the formation of the modern world that informs Du Bois’s thought and gave rise to his understanding of “the problem of the color line” is on display here. Indeed, the essays constitute an essential companion to Du Bois’s 1903 masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk” – publisher. (385 pages)  Here is a copy of Du Bois' speech made to the World Congress which popularized his phrase the "color line" worldwide.  Du Bois’s remarks were given on July 25, 1900 at the convention meeting site at Westminster Hall in London. He called for racial uplift and equality of education and opportunity for all Black peoples. 

    The Souls of Black Folk, W.E. B. Du Bois, A.C. McClurg, 1903-4. This book contains powerful arguments that show the problem of the position of black people in the US at the turn of the 20th-century. Du Bois identified three significant issues ('the color line'; 'double consciousness'; and 'the veil') that acted as roadblocks to true black emancipation, and showed how each of these in turn contributed to the problem of inequality. Du Bois carefully investigates all three problems, constructing clear explanations of their significance in shaping the consciousness of a community that has been systematically discriminated against, and dealing brilliantly with counter-arguments throughout. - publisher

“I believe that all men, black and brown and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form and gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike in soul and the possibility of infinite development (Credo)”...“ Are we not coming more and more, day by day, to making the statement ‘I am white,’ the one fundamental tenet of our practical morality...” -author  (264 pages)

    Darkwater; Voices from Within the Veil, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920. Also Internet Archive,  UC Berkeley digitized copy, 2006. “These are the things of which men think who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War”- Du Bois. Darkwater helped to open the eyes of readers to the [widespread and multilayered] problems of racial discrimination in America.  In his review of Darkwater in the popular magazine The Survey, Robert Foerster writes, “Actually, it is a book so skillfully put together, so passionately felt, so lyrically expressed, that it will be read widely.”  (276 pages)

Rev. Peter Thomas Stanford: Ancient Rhetoric, Abolition, and Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford’s The Tragedy (1897) Dr. Kelly Dugan writes on Rev. Stanford’s use of the tools of ancient rhetoric in his work, The Tragedy, to look over the long view of history to argue for the sanctity of Black life, in an era of lynching and Jim Crow.  Grades13-16

Black Laws: Autobiography of William Sanders Scarborough (Ronnick, 2006), p.190, p.157-8; Here he describes his treatment at hotels and venues, despite being an invited member or speaker at meetings and conferences. He also tells about his efforts to repeal the Black Laws in Ohio.

Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line. From the Database of Classical Scholars, we get this mention: Helen Maria Chesnutt wrote a biography of her father, entitled Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line, which remains an important source of information about him and his works. The biography is available Google books et al. (1952) University of North Carolina Press Enduring Edition (digital copy purchase) ebook 2017.

Charles Waddell Chesnutt (June 20, 1858 - November 15,1932): As a member of the early  NAACP, he knew Du Bois and Washington and set his goal on achieving full equality regardless of race. There is a Wiki article overview on the life and literary accomplishments of Charles Waddell Chesnutt. Though of mixed racial heritage, Chesnutt chose to identify as a person of color. At the time in the South there was the “one drop” rule as to racial heritage as Black. His novels depicted Blacks and often included African American Vernacular English dialogue. His short story collection, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line (1899), which included the title story, as well as "The Passing of Grandison", and others. These overturned contemporary ideas about the behavior of enslaved people, and his several novels embracing difficult racial themes and realities are cited as foundation for the modern African-American novel. His daughter Helen Maria Chesnutt wrote a biography of her father 'Pioneer of the Color Line,' listed above.

Glass, Ernestine Pickens. "Chesnutt's Identity and the Color Line." Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. 43, no. 2, fall 2010, pp. 71+. Gale Literature ResourceCenter, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A268791436/LitRC?u=anon~4c751c40&sid=googleScholar&xid=de07599a.

Helen Maria Chesnutt:  Born December 6, 1880 in Fayetteville, NC - died August 7, 1969 in Cleveland OH)  A graduate of Smith College (BA) and Columbia University (MA) she lived and worked in Cleveland, Ohio as a high school Latin teacher, and co-authored a Latin text. She was one of the daughters of Charles Waddell Chesnutt. She wrote a biography of her father.  More information about Miss Chesnutt can be found here in 2 NCLG Spotlight Articles: Helen and Dorothy Chesnutt exhibit, and  Helen Maria Chesnutt. NCLG also has a self-print poster available on the Chesnutt sisters' role in Cleveland schools. 

     Additionally, please see “Classical Education and the Advancement of African American Women from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century,” Ronnick, in Unsealing the Fountain: Pioneering Female Classical Scholars from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century.  2 Spotlight slideshows C-RM  Grades7-16

Empire of Ruin, Black Classicism and the American Imperial Culture, John Levi Barnard, Ch.4, ‘Ancient History, American Time: Charles Chesnutt and the Sites of Memory’(2018). The book..”identifies and critiques the widespread appropriation of classical tradition to the projects of exceptionalist historiography and cultural white supremacy …typically… the United States as the inheritor of the best traditions of classical antiquity and thus as the standard bearer for the idea of civilization. Where dominant narratives - articulated through political speeches and editorials, poetry and the visual arts, and the monumental architecture of Washington, DC - envision the political project of the United States as modeled on ancient Rome yet destined to surpass it in the unfolding of an exceptional history, the writers, artists, and activists this book considers have connected modern America to the ancient world through the institution of slavery and the geopolitics of empire…from Phillis Wheatley’s poetry in the era of Revolution, through the antislavery writings of David Walker, William Wells Brown, and the black newspapers of the antebellum period, to the works of Charles Chesnutt, Toni Morrison, and other twentieth-century writers, before concluding with the monumental sculpture of the contemporary artist Kara Walker.” - publisher  Check for institutional access here. 

Theophilus Gould Steward (April 17, 1843 Gouldtown or Bridgeton, NJ – January 11, 1924 at Wilberforce, OH) and Dr. Susan Maria Steward (March 7, 1847 in Brooklyn -  March 17, 1918 in Brooklyn). Theophilus Steward had an amazing career. He was well educated and became a minister in Macon, GA, an army Chaplain, and educator, and an author of religious works, a history of African Americans, an AME Church history, an account of the Haitian revolution, a novel, and his autobiography. Steward assisted Bishop Alexander Payne in starting new Southern AME churches, worked in Haiti, and in 1891 he started to serve as African American officer in the US army as chaplain and educator in Western US, and in Cuba and the Philippines during the Spanish American War in 1898. He was a participant in the March 5, 1897 meeting to celebrate the memory of Frederick Douglass at which was founded the American Negro Academy led by Alexander Crummell. He was also an educator, serving in 1907 as Vice President of Wilberforce University. He taught History, French and Logic for 7 years and knew English, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. He twice traveled to Europe. Steward was acquainted with classicist W.S. Scarborough all his life. NCLG offers a full biographic handout on Theophilus and Susan Steward HERE.  Handout C-RM Grades7-16

Dr. Susan Maria McKinney Steward, Theophilus Steward's second wife (they married in 1896) was of African, Shinnecock, and Caucasian family ancestry. She was one of the 1st African American women to graduate from medical school (the 1st from New York Medical College for Women in 1870; the 3rd US African American woman doctor). Also she was an accomplished musician, valedictorian, homeopathic doctor practicing for 48 years, founder of a women’s hospital for African Americans, university physician, army physician, licensed physician in four states, speaker at an international conference. W.E.B. Du Bois gave the eulogy at her funeral. Her elder sister had married famous abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet and was the first female African American public school principal. Further sources for both Stewards: BlackPast, Documenting the American South (LOC and UNC); See Works by Theophilus Gould Steward at Project Gutenberg and Works by or about Theophilus Gould Steward at Internet Archive. An NCLG biographic classroom informational handout is offered HERE for Theophilus and Susan Steward.  Handout C-RM  Grades9-16

Robert Tecumtha Browne (July 16,1882 - October,1978), was a prominent thinker of his era. Achievements include co-founding the Negro Library Association in New York City in October 1914, to promote literacy via exhibits of books, manuscripts, and photographs. In 1919, concealing his race, he published his masterwork, The Mystery of Space, considered by critics a unique blend of "mathematics, hyperspace, Eastern religious philosophy, theosophy, and mysticism." He was highly praised by critics and the press and was the first African American to publish on such a topic. Browne served as the Vice President of ANA in 1921, the same year in which he delivered the keynote address, entitled "Einstein's Theory of Relativity." He was an associate of the scholar Arthur Schomburg and historian Carter G. Woodson, and assisted them in advancing the mission of the ANA. Other facts about his life: He was born near LaGrange, TX to a formerly enslaved couple. He was a superior student and rose to graduate from Samuel Huston College in Austin in 1903 and became a teacher, husband and father. He passed the civil service exam, and became a US Army Quartermaster in San Antonio. After his wife died in 1911, he became Army Clerk in Harlem, NY and was active in the AME Church, YMCA, and Negro Civic League of Greater New York. He continued his education with chemistry and literature classes at the City College of New York. Browne was a staunch supporter of black nationalist Marcus Garvey, contributing to his organization’s newspaper. To avoid racial discrimination, he relocated from Harlem to Brooklyn, began wearing a turban, pretended to be a foreigner named Mulla Hanaranda. In 1933 he was transferred to the Philippines US Territory, where in 1941 he was captured and endured a horrific Japanese POW camp. In 1945 he was freed and on return, married a fellow prisoner. He continued his metaphysical teachings until he died in New York City at age 96. (linked article) C-RM Grades7-16

Edwin Clarence Joseph Turpin Howard, MD, a doctor of 10 distinctions! Dr. Howard was born on October 21, 1846 in Boston, Massachusetts to Joan Louise Turpin Howard and Edwin Frederick Howard. He died in Philadelphia on May 10, 1912. He attended the Boston Latin (Preparatory High) School and then traveled to Monrovia, Liberia, where he enrolled in Liberia College, studying there from 1861 to 1865. He returned to the United States to study at Boston City Hospital and then at Harvard Medical College. His notable accomplishments include 1) First African-American graduate of Harvard Medical School (1869),  2) Practicing doctor in Charleston, SC and Philadelphia, PA, 3) First Master of Alban Lodge No. 57 (No. 35), Prince Hall Masons, 4) Major and Surgeon General in the 12th PA Infantry regiment corps, 5) Elected in 1888 to Philadelphia Board of Education for 11 years, 6) Co-founder of Frederick Douglass Memorial Hospital (1895) - the first African-American hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; also lecturer at Nurses Training School, 7) Co-founder of Mercy Hospital (1905) - Philadelphia's second African-American medical institution, 8) Co-founder of Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity (1904) - the first African-American Greek-lettered organization in the United States and founded by six African Americans, 9) Member of American Medical Association, Philadelphia Medical Society, and 10) Member of Citizen’s Republican Club (served a term as President), and served at AME Church. Sources: Harvard University and BlackPast 

Dr. John Stewart Rock made famous these phrases: “Black is beautiful,” and (1858) “I will sink or swim with my race” (Born October 13, 1825 in Salem, NJ  – died December 3, 1866, Boston, MA) Schoolteacher, dentist, physician, lawyer, graduate of the American Medical College in Philadelphia, member of the Massachusetts bar, proficient in Greek and Latin, Dr. John S. Rock was unequivocally one of the most distinguished African American leaders to emerge in the United States during the antebellum era. Details: A free African American, he attended public schools and then became a teacher while studying medicine. Denied admission to medical school, he studied dentistry and opened a practice. When he did gain admission to American Medical School, he graduated in 2 years. He moved to Boston and also served fugitive slaves for free. His education made him a gifted orator for abolition, voting rights, and the new Republican Party. **(see below) When his health failed, he studied law and was one of the first African Americans admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1861. After the 13th Amendment passed in 1865, he was immediately invited to join the US Supreme Court, but his tuberculosis forced him to refuse to serve. He died soon after.  ** On March 5, 1858, Dr. Rock delivered a speech at Boston’s Faneuil Hall as part of the annual Crispus Attucks Day observance organized by Boston’s black abolitionists in response to the Dred Scott decision. Rock shared the platform with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker. Three years before the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Rock correctly predicted that African Americans were destined to play an important role in the impending military conflict over slavery. His speech appears in full HERE. Source: Library of Congress 

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906, Dayton, OH) In The Collected Works of William Sanders Scarborough (Ronnick, Ed. 2006, Biographies, p.130-136 Scarborough lavishly describes the high accomplishments of Paul Laurence Dunbar, ’The Poet Laureate of the Negro Race’ (1914), and of others who crossed the Color Line, proving that ‘“Souls of Black Folks” do not differ…in high impulses and inspirations and even genius.’ Son of emancipated slaves who had moved to Dayton, Ohio, Dunbar began a very successful writing career in his childhood and lived to be very well-connected socially and politically. He became the lyric voice of Black life and penned the first Black musical on Broadway, published several books of poetry, novels and short stories and was widely recognized nationally and internationally; a stunning example of racial uplift, the Black intellectual identity, and victory over the Color Line. He supported the formation of American Negro Academy in DC in 1897 which encouraged study of classical academic subjects and liberal arts. Though he was president of his Dayton Central High School Literary Society, wrote a newspaper (published by the Wright brothers!), published a few poems in the Dayton Herald, was in debate club, and desired to study Law, Dunbar could not afford college. When a supporter offered to pay tuition he refused, so he could have time to write. Much later, in Washington, he attended Howard University, but his actual coursework in high school and college is not known.

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Topics: Educational reform; Equality of access to education;  Empowering women as orators and activists

Anna Julia Cooper, Educator, Writer, and Intellectual. The National Museum of African American History and Culture offers this illustrated digital article, featuring this amazing woman and her life as a fierce women’s equality advocate. NCLG also offers a slide presentation "Anna Julia Cooper" summarizing her life and contributions that is a great introduction for students. Born into slavery in Raleigh, NC, on August 10, 1858, the emancipated Cooper had to fight as she grew up for the right to access quality education. She led protests to gain admission to the men’s Greek and Latin curriculum at Saint Augustine Normal and Collegiate Institute in Raleigh and to seek an end to other forms of abuse and submission. While at Oberlin College later, and as educator in DC and MIssouri, she faced similar discrimination, especially for supporting a classical liberal arts curriculum(She taught Latin, Math, Science). Her life became tied to her unique style of leadership and activism. She wrote A Voice from the South, by a Black Woman of the South, a collection of speeches and essays exposing the perils of Jim Crow laws and revisionist politics after the failure of Reconstruction (1892). A Voice has many classical allusions. She felt Black women had a unique perspective on the “race problem” and equality that needed to be a pivotal part of any solution. Became fourth Black woman earning a Ph.D. in America, after graduating from University of Paris - Sorbonne. She died in Washington, DC on February 27, 1964.  C-RM  Grades7-16  NCLG slideshow- C-RM  Grades7-16

“Anna Julia Cooper”  Excellent interview by Tony Williams from the Bill of Rights Institute with Dr. Anika T. Prather in their Black Intellectuals Series. Educated at St. Augustine and Oberlin College and earning her doctorate the Sorbonne in Paris, Cooper used socratic dialogue in her teaching and her essays and focused on recognizing Black equality and humanity and the role of education to bring racial healing and unity, as well as uplifting force for women’s rights and civic virtues. (26 min) https://youtu.be/q_oBWec3_8E      C-RM  Grades7-16

The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters; Esme Bhan and Charles Lemert ed.s, Rowman & Littlefield, 1998 (359 pages). Excellent sourcebook for students and teachers. Includes a biography, as well. Chapter titles are listed on Google Books page, which will be helpful to see all the diverse topics covered in this collection.  (Separately, each could provide a good lesson)  C-RM  Grades9-16

The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper, Including a Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters, by Anna J. Cooper, Lemert and Bhan, ed.s, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000 (e-book, hardbound, or borrow from your institution library).  Contents (summary here) cover a wide range of topics and perspectives presented by Anna Julia Cooper. The publishers offer this note “Recently Anna Julia Cooper has emerged as the most important classic writer in the tradition of African American feminist thought. Mary Helen Washington described Cooper's work as "the most precise, forceful, well-argued statement of black feminist thought to come out of the nineteenth century." This is the first collection of all of Cooper's major writings, including many never before published. It includes all of the essays from her famous book, A Voice from the South, in addition to many other essays and letters accessible only in archives until now. The organization of this important new collection lends itself to a clearer understanding of the major themes and contributions of Cooper's thought, her development as a thinker and writer, and the critiques and controversies surrounding her work. Lemert and Bhan introduce Cooper as an activist, settlement founder, school teacher, college president, linguist, and scholar—a life that paralleled the prodigious accomplishments of W.E.B. Du Bois in so many ways.”

Uplifting the Women and the Race: The Lives, Educational Philosophies and Social Activism of Anna Julia Cooper and Nannie Helen Burroughs, Karen Johnson, Routledge (2000). This is part of Studies in African American History and Culture, 1st Ed. This study identifies and analyzes themes that illuminate Cooper and Burroughs' unique angle of vision of self, community, and society as it relates to their distinctive educational philosophies and contributions to American education. Teaching resource book.

Sarah Jane Woodson Early was born a free Black in Chillicothe, OH on November 15, 1825. She was a 1856 graduate of Oberlin College with a major in Classical Studies. She first began to teach at Xenia public schools. She was the youngest sister of one of the original trustees of Wilberforce University, Rev. Lewis Woodson, and she was hired to teach English and Latin there, becoming the first female African American college (HBCU) professor (per Foner, Lift Every Voice). She returned to Wilberforce in 1866 which had closed briefly during the Civil War, in a position of greater responsibility, Lady Principal. Woodson, aged 42 in 1868, married the Reverend Jordan Winston Early, an AME minister who had risen from slavery. She chose to continue her career as an educator in North Carolina after the Civil War to aid emancipated families. In 1893, Woodson spoke at the World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago. Woodson was one of five African American women invited to speak at this event, along with: Fannie Barrier Williams, Anna Julia Cooper, Hallie Quinn Brown, and Fanny Jackson Coppin (per Hairston), Woodson, Cooper and Coppin all having connections to Classics. She is known as career teacher, principal of 4 schools, Black nationalist, temperance activist, and author. In 1888 she became the national leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for four years. She died in Nashville, TN on August 15, 1907. Many facts about famous teachers and alumni at Wilberforce University and a full history is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilberforce_University

Mary Church Terrell: Because of Her Story: Activist and Suffragist Mary Church Terrell. This National Museum of African American History and Culture offers this illustrated digital article on the life and work of Terrell, friend of Anna Julia Cooper. She worked tirelessly to advocate for women’s voting rights and right to higher education and social equality. Terrell was born in Memphis, TN, on September 23, 1863. Her parents had previously been enslaved but had worked to run very successful businesses. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees  in liberal arts at Antioch and Oberlin in Ohio. She taught at Wilberforce in Ohio and then moved to Washington, DC, where she taught high school and met and married lawyer Robert Terrell. She was the first Black woman on the DC Board of Education. After a Memphis friend was lynched, she began a long public campaign against lynch laws. She fought for voting rights alongside Susan B. Anthony, even picketing the White House. She co-founded the NACW in 1896 and later was a charter member of  the NAACP when it was founded in 1909, working for “racial uplift.” She was the first black woman to address the 1904 International Congress of Women in Berlin, speaking in French, German and English! She died July 24, 1954 in Annapolis, MD.    NCLG also offers a classroom slideshow to introduce students to Terrell.  Both the site and slides are  C-RM  Grades7-16  

'Classical Education and the Advancement of African American Women in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.' Ronnick, Michele Valerie, chapter in Rosie Wyles, and Edith Hall (eds), Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly, Classical Presences (Oxford, 2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 17 Nov. 2016), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198725206.003.0009, (Access fully via university library sign-in) Author Michele Valerie Ronnick has shared  with NCLG this personal copy.  NCLG offers this Summary of Contents page with more details of states, dates, and schools of these women.  Susie King Taylor, Lucy Craft Laney, Frazelia Campbell, Anna Julia Cooper, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Helen Maria Chesnutt: Ronnick offers an interesting summary of the careers and contributions of seven Black female educators, instrumental in the spread of the classical curriculum after the Civil War. Women highlighted lived in seven states and the District of Columbia: Also White female teachers who gave up other opportunities and dedicated themselves to advancing Black education included Sarah Ann Dickey, Helen Clarissa Morgan, and Sarah Cordelia Bierce Scarborough. Ronnick concludes with info on female Black artists with classical influences, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, and Jesmyn Ward. (15 pages) - review by NCLG

Fanny Jackson Coppin  was  'born to teach my people.'  Famously she told Frederick Douglass that she had a deep 'desire to see my race lifted out of the mire of ignorance, weakness and degradation; .... I want to see him crowned with strength and dignity; adorned with the enduring grace of intellectual attainments.' She was an innovative educator and effective leader in the mission field of racial uplift through Black education, especially for women. She was born in Washington, DC in 1837 on October 15 and died in Philadelphia, PA in 1913 on January 21. Rising from enslavement to become an Oberlin College graduate, Fanny Jackson devoted herself first to teaching Latin, Greek, and Math at ICY in Philadelphia (later Cheyney University), then became Women's Principal, then Head Principal of the Institute, a first for an African American woman. She developed a new teacher training program, or Normal School. After marrying Rev. Coppin, she also became a missionary to South Africa, counseling women. NCLG offers a biographic page HERE.  Handout C-RM  Grades7-16

Henrietta Cordlia Ray (August 30, 1849 - January 5, 1916): Born in New York City to parents who were involved in supporting the Underground Railroad operation in Manhattan, Ray was encouraged in her education. She earned a Master’s in Pedagogy from City University of New York, studied Latin, Greek, French and German, was a teacher and a published poet. She wrote famous elegies on several notable people (Dunbar, L’Ouverture, Stowe, Douglass) and her poem, Lincoln, was read at the unveiling of the Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C. She and her sister Florence wrote a biography of their father, Rev. Charles B. Ray who was an active abolitionist and the publisher of The Colored American in New York City. She died on January 5, 1916. Her sister Charlotte was first African American woman to earn a law degree (Howard University). This link goes to a short NCLG biographic fact sheet for teachers and students about Ray.  NCLG also offers a biographic slideshow in Google Slides and PDF  format- All 3 are C-RM  Grades7-16

Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (Born in Portland ME in 1859- died August 13,1930 in Cambridge, MA) was an activist and intellectual, and a prolific female writer of four novels, many short stories and articles, many of which focused on the very significant issues facing the life of African Americans in the North and the South. Topics of Hopkins included the great heritage of African civilization, the woman’s role in society, and the many forms of racial discrimination. She worked as an editor at the Colored Cooperative Publishing Company and her works often appeared in their Colored American Magazine (NY) and later in the Voice of the Negro (Atlanta) after Booker T. Washington’s agent purchased the Magazine. She was also a singer and playwright (The Underground Railroad) and an orator active in literary societies and women’s clubs. This link goes to a fact sheet of biographical information offered by the Pauline Hopkins Society and University of Tennessee.   C-RM   Grades9-16

Nannie Helen Burroughs: Educational Innovator: NCLG offers this slideshow lesson on her life and contributions.  BlackPast.org has an entry stating that she was born in VA, May 2, 1879 and lived in Louisville, KY and Washington, D.C. until May 20, 1961. (Jackson, E., 2007, March 27, BlackPast.org)  More information on “Nannie Helen Burroughs and her “most creditable work”  is found in the Library of Congress, which offers a short but well-illustrated biographical blog with many links to good resources for teachers and students. She attended Eckstein-Norton University and eventually received an honorary M.A. degree in 1907. She always said that she felt vocational and classical training were 'compatible.' Well-educated and a friend of Terrell, Bethune, and Cooper, she worked with many Black women activists, especially in the area of labor and civil rights. She also opened National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC in 1909 which she ran until her death in 1961.  Slides and sites: C-RM   Grades7-16

“Black Feminist Thought and Classics: Re-membering, Re-claiming, Re-empowering.” Shelley P. Haley, 1993, in N. Sorkin Rabinowitz and A. Richlin (eds.) Feminist Theory and the Classics. New York: 23–43. Haley discusses from her personal life and professional experiences the negative and limiting effects of attitudes and prejudices over centuries require Black feminists and all scholars to re-examine all historical and literary accounts with different perspectives. In her summary words, she states "Black feminist thought provides a standpoint from which to  re-member, to reclaim, to re-empower the ancient African woman. Through Black feminist thought, classics can be radically transformed from a discipline into a multiracial, multicultural, multivalent field which better reflects the ancient world it studies. Black feminists, in turn, should view classics , not as the “enemy, ” but as a source of symbolic value for so many of our foremothers as they struggled against racism and sexism." Available in Resources at MRECC.

Walters, T.L., 2007. African American Literature and the Classicist Tradition: Black Women Writers from Wheatley to Morrison. New York. ‘This is a groundbreaking study exploring the significant relationship between western classical mythology and African American women's literature. A comparative analysis of classical revisions by …Phillis Wheatley and Pauline Hopkins and twentieth century writers Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, and Rita Dove reveals that Black women writers revise specific classical myths for artistic and political agency. …The women also use myth as a liberating space where they can 'speak the unspeakable' and empower their subjects as well as themselves.’ – Palgrave Macmillan

    ‘From the abstract we learn that Walters writes on these topics: ……outlining three main issues in the sub-field of Classica Africana, which originated in the 1990s (1) to “study the contributions of African American classicists past and present” (2); to “study Blacks in antiquity” (3); and to “[concentrate] on how African American authors have adapted myths.”  Both the aptly named introduction, “Writing the Classics Black: The Poetic and Political Function of African American Women’s Classical Revision,” and the first chapter, “Historical Overview of Ancient and Contemporary Representations of Classical Mythology,” create needed interdisciplinary connections among Classics, American literature, Comparative Literature, and Black women’s studies. …. The book’s chronological structure demonstrates both the historicity and continued relevance of specific issues like “Black female sexuality, Black female oppression, and the struggle to define a Black female identity” in Black women’s literature…’ - J. Rossi, St. John Fisher College, published review