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It being Black History month let us expand our pantheon of heroes and she-roes- "the great cloud of witnesses that surround us." Those men and women who with audacious faith, and fewer resources than us, did so much for so many.
Do you know about Anna Julia Haywood-Cooper and Elizabeth Evelyn Wright? Both women were born during the last half of the 19th century. Both women had immense appetites for learning and for service. Cooper received her degrees from Oberlin College and was made principal of the African-American High School in Washington DC. She was denied reappointment to that post when she refused to lower the educational standards for her students. Undaunted, she became the fourth African-American woman to receive her doctorate from the Sorbonne in Paris. She went on to serve as President of Freylinghuysen University, in Washington DC, for twelve years.
Elizabeth Evelyn Wright was a Georgian. She attended Tuskegee for night classes but because of her, "promise and strength of character," Booker T. Washington made it possible for her to attend day classes. She paused her own educational pursuits to open a school in South Carolina for rural children. Outdone by arsonists, she returned to Tuskegee to finish her degree. She would later return to South Carolina to begin what has become Voorhees College, an Episcopal affiliated College.
Both strong women; both women of faith; both builders for children and young people.
"The true measure of a race can be measured by the character of its womanhood."
Mary McLeod Bethune, 1935
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