Bowman, Thea (29 December 1937–30 March 1990), Roman Catholic nun, educator, and advocate for Catholicism within African American communities, was born Bertha Elizabeth Bowman in Yazoo City, Mississippi, the daughter of Theon Edward Bowman and Mary Esther Coleman Bowman. According to Bowman, her childhood was relatively happy and free from financial worries; her father was a doctor and her mother had been a teacher prior to the birth of their only child. As a young girl Bowman attended a number of African American churches, including Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Adventist, A.M.E., and A.M.E. Zion. Relationships she developed with members of the Catholic Order of the Missionary Servants of the Moly Holy Trinity, which included priests, sisters, and brothers, led her to convert to Catholicism when she was nine years old. In June 1947 Bowman was baptized at Holy Child Jesus Mission in Canton, Mississippi. She made her First Communion the following day....
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Bowman, Thea (29 December 1937–30 March 1990)
Margaret M. McGuinness
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Bronson, Ruth Muskrat (3 Oct. 1897–12 June 1982), Cherokee activist, educator, and federal official
Kirby Brown
Bronson, Ruth Muskrat (3 Oct. 1897–12 June 1982), Cherokee activist, educator, and federal official, was born Ruth Muskrat, the fourth of seven children, on a small farm in the Delaware District of the Cherokee Nation near what is now Grove, Oklahoma. Her mother, Ida Lenora Kelly, was the child of English-Irish immigrants who entered the Cherokee Nation on work permits from Missouri. Her father, James Ezekiel Muskrat, was a descendant of both Old Settler Cherokees and those forcibly removed from their homes in Georgia two decades later during what has come to be known as the Trail of Tears. A language speaker and conservative traditionalist, James was a committed Cherokee nationalist in a time when Cherokee sovereignty was increasingly under assault by industrial interests, territorial advocates, and proponents of allotment, assimilation, and Oklahoma statehood. With the passage of the Curtis Act in ...
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Burroughs, Margaret (1 November 1917–21 November 2010), artist, educator, and institution builder
Mary Ann Cain
Burroughs, Margaret (1 November 1917–21 November 2010), artist, educator, and institution builder, was born Victoria Margaret Taylor (later reversed to Margaret Victoria) in St. Rose Parish, Louisiana, the youngest of three daughters, to Christopher Alexander “Tooker” Taylor, a farmer and laborer, and Octavia Pierre, a teacher and domestic worker. Margaret Taylor’s first five years were idyllic, playing along Mississippi River levees, roaming fields and woods, and gaining an early education in the back of a Baptist church where her mother conducted classes. Unlike many descendants of enslaved people, the Taylors and Pierres were unusually fortunate to know their ancestry. Throughout her life, Taylor would emphasize the importance of identity and knowing one’s roots. Mae-Mae, her full-blooded Creole maternal grandmother, lived across the river in Ama and regaled Margaret with stories about their family, experiences during slavery, and African heritage. Such stories bolstered Taylor when she met her own life’s challenges....
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Carlson, Grace Holmes (13 Nov. 1906–7 July 1992), Trotskyist partisan, Catholic lay activist, and educator
Donna T. Haverty-Stacke
Carlson, Grace Holmes (13 Nov. 1906–7 July 1992), Trotskyist partisan, Catholic lay activist, and educator, was born Grace Holmes in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her German-born mother, Mary Nuebel, had worked as a clerk in a grocery store until 1904, when she married James Holmes, an Irish-American boilermaker employed by the Great Northern Railroad. Grace Holmes had one sister, Helen Dorsey (known as Dorothy), born in ...
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Castro, Sal (25 October 1933–15 April 2013)
Mario T. Garcia
Castro, Sal (25 October 1933–15 April 2013), high school teacher and community activist, was born Salvador Castro in Los Angeles, the only child of Carmen Buruel and Salvador Castro, both Mexican immigrant workers. Because his father was undocumented he was deported in 1935 as part of a repatriation movement that blamed Mexican immigrants for taking jobs from “real Americans” during the Great Depression; Castro and his mother were spared being part of this tragic episode. The separation eventually led to his parents divorcing; his mother later remarried....
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Catto, Octavius Valentine (22 February 1839–10 October 1871), civil rights activist, educator, and athlete
Timothy J. Potero
Catto, Octavius Valentine (22 February 1839–10 October 1871), civil rights activist, educator, and athlete, was born to William T. Catto and Sarah Isabella Cain in Charleston, South Carolina. His family soon moved to Baltimore, Maryland and ultimately settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Catto’s father, a former slave who gained his freedom early in life, became an ordained Presbyterian minister. His mother came from a mulatto family. Catto attended segregated primary classes at the Vaux Primary School and the Lombard Street School in Philadelphia and the prestigious Allentown Academy in Allentown, New Jersey. In ...
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Catto, Octavius Valentine (22 February 1839–10 October 1871)
S. Fox
In
Portrait of Octavius V. Catto, c.1871, by S. Fox
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, [LC-DIG-ppmsca-18480]
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De Cora, Angel (1868 or 1869–6 February 1919), artist and educator
Anne Ruggles Gere
De Cora, Angel (1868 or 1869–6 February 1919), artist and educator, was born in northeast Nebraska on the Winnebago Indian reservation to David Decora (Hagarsarechkaw), son of Winnebago chief Little Decora, and Elizabeth Lamere, daughter of a French Canadian fur trader and a Winnebago Metis woman. (De Cora is sometimes spelled DeCora or Decora.) Angel’s earliest education occurred at the reservation boarding school, and in ...
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Horton, Myles (9 July 1905–19 January 1990), co-founder of the Highlander School, educator and activist in the labor and civil rights movements
Dale Jacobs
Horton, Myles (9 July 1905–19 January 1990), co-founder of the Highlander School, educator and activist in the labor and civil rights movements, was born Myles Falls Horton in Savannah, Tennessee, the eldest son of Elsie Falls Horton and Perry Horton. Both parents were schoolteachers prior to Horton’s birth, but lost their jobs when the qualifications to teach were increased to include a year of high school, which neither of them possessed. After a number of years of low-paying jobs, Horton’s father became an active participant in the Worker’s Alliance, the union of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), while Horton’s mother volunteered to teach literacy in the community. Horton later said that he took from his mother a belief in the power of love, “the principle of trying to serve people and build a loving world” (Horton, p. 7). These lessons in working for the greater good of society would serve as the guiding force throughout his life....
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Johnson, Grace Allen (9 September 1871–17 January 1952), suffragist, educator, and peace activist
Barbara F. Berenson
Johnson, Grace Allen (9 September 1871–17 January 1952), suffragist, educator, and peace activist, was born Grace Allen Fitch in Maples, Indiana, the daughter of Appleton Howe Fitch, a Civil War Union Army veteran and manufacturer, and Elizabeth Harriet Bennett, a former schoolteacher. Grace lived in Maples and then Kalamazoo, Michigan, until she was fourteen, when her father became manager of his mother’s farm in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. She graduated from Hopkinton High School in ...
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Lewis, Cornelia “Nell” Battle (28 May 1893–26 Nov. 1956), journalist, lawyer, and educator
Elizabeth Gillespie McRae
Lewis, Cornelia “Nell” Battle (28 May 1893–26 Nov. 1956), journalist, lawyer, and educator, was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, to Richard Henry Lewis, a physician, and his second wife, Mary Gordon Lewis of Albemarle County, Virginia. Nell (as she was always known) was named after Dr. Lewis’s first wife, and raised by his third, Annie Blackwell, along with three older half-brothers and a half-sister. Educated at St. Mary’s School in Raleigh, she excelled at basketball, debating, and writing and served as the editor of the school’s annual publication and monthly magazine, both named ...
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McMillan, Enolia (20 October 1904–24 October 2006)
Lee Sartain
McMillan, Enolia (20 October 1904–24 October 2006), educator and civil rights activist, was born Enolia Virginia Pettigan in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. She was the eldest of four children born to former slave John Pettigan and domestic worker Elizabeth Fortune. Her family moved to Cecil County, Maryland in 1912 after her father bought a small farm. She graduated from Baltimore’s Douglass High School in 1922. She was recipient of the first scholarship from the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and attended Howard University, a traditionally black college in Washington, D.C., and graduated with a bachelor of arts in education in 1927....
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Wharton, Robert Leslie (5 Sept. 1871–2 Aug. 1960), presbyterian missionary, pastor, teacher, and school administrator
Joe P. Dunn
Wharton, Robert Leslie (5 Sept. 1871–2 Aug. 1960), presbyterian missionary, pastor, teacher, and school administrator in Cuba, was born on his parents’ farm in McLeansville, North Carolina to William P. Wharton and Jane N. Rankin Wharton, who were married in 1856. After graduation from Davidson College with an A.B. in ...
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Whitehurst, Keturah E. (12 March 1912–20 May 2000), psychologist and educator
Lucy Xie and Alexandra Rutherford
Whitehurst, Keturah E. (12 March 1912–20 May 2000), psychologist and educator, was born Keturah Elisabeth Whitehurst in Jackson County, Florida. Her grandfather had escaped enslavement in Alabama and settled in Florida. Her father was an African Methodist Episcopal preacher. He believed in the transformative power of education and enrolled Keturah in Edward Waters High School, a church boarding school in Jacksonville, Florida. She graduated at the young age of sixteen as the valedictorian of her class. She then travelled north to attend prestigious Howard University in Washington, D.C. At Howard she majored in English and psychology and graduated with her bachelor’s degree at the age of nineteen in ...
