This February 2025, we’re honoring Black History Month. The 2025 theme is “African Americans and Labor,” emphasizing the affect Black Americans have made via varied working roles.
We’d like to acknowledge the numerous contributions of three Black educators who helped form the way forward for greater schooling, breaking down obstacles and inspiring generations of learners and instructional leaders.
Mary McLeod Bethune
Mary McLeod Bethune is thought to be some of the vital Black educators and civil rights activists of the twentieth century. The daughter of previously enslaved dad and mom, Bethune believed schooling was key to opening the doorways of alternative for Black Americans. She based the Daytona Regular and Industrial Institute for Negro Ladies in Daytona, Florida, in 1904, serving as president of the varsity. The faculty was ultimately mixed with the Cookman Institute for Males in 1923 (different sources cite 1929), merging to type the Bethune-Cookman School, Bethune changing into the primary Black girl to function a university president. The faculty was one of many few establishments the place Black college students might search a university diploma. And as of fall 2023, Bethune-Cookman College enrolled 2,415 undergraduate college students.
Kelly Miller
Kelly Miller was a groundbreaking educator, mathematician and author, changing into the primary Black man to attend Johns Hopkins College for publish-graduate examine. He would go on to ultimately be part of Howard College’s college as a arithmetic professor, serving to discovered the American Negro Academy in 1897, the primary group for Black students and artists.
Miller launched sociology to Howard’s curriculum in 1895, changing into the primary particular person to show the topic on the college. Finally changing into dean of Howard’s School of Arts and Sciences in 1907, he labored so as to add new pure and social science programs, remodeling the curriculum. Resulting from his tireless recruitment efforts throughout the south, pupil enrollment tripled throughout his first 4 years in that place.
Mary Jane Patterson
Turning into the primary Black girl to obtain a bachelor’s diploma when she graduated from Oberlin School in 1862, Mary Jane Patterson shortly established herself as trailblazer. She devoted her profession to schooling, instructing on the Institute of Coloured Youth, now generally known as Cheyney College, ultimately changing into the varsity principal on the Preparatory Excessive Faculty for Coloured Youth, the primary U.S. public highschool for Black Americans. The Mary Jane Patterson Scholarship was established in 2019, which goals to assist publish-baccalaureate college students who’re concerned with instructing in city school rooms.
Throughout this Black History Month 2025, we have fun the contributions of those three Black educators whose accomplishments proceed to ring out all through greater schooling at present.
For those who’re concerned with historical past content material in your course, we encourage you to browse our historical past catalog.
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