In Search of Ethel T. Overby: Who Was She?

• In Event: Frequently Asked Questions: Engendering the Lives, Work, and Careers of “Little Known” Black Women Educators Who Made History

Abstract

This panel presentation explores the lives, work and careers of four “little known” black women educators—at least outside of academic circles—who made history: Septima Poinsette Clark (1898-1987), Ethel Thompson Overby (1892-1977), Merze Tate (1905-1996) and Marion Thompson Wright (1905-1962). Through a telling and re-telling of their biographies, which has presented some methodological challenges for each researcher, panelists argue that simply knowing about their lives, work and careers is not enough; rather, knowing about their lives can tell us a great deal about what academics can do “behind the scenes” or “offstage” to improve educational access and opportunity and to serve the public good. As scholars today work to imagine policies and practices in schools and communities that can bring about social justice in education, these black women theorized educational policies and practices that are just as timely today as when they lived.

Ethel Thompson Overby became the first African American woman principal in Richmond, Virginia in 1933. It was approximately fifty years since the African American community had initiated their protest to secure black leadership in the segregated schools of Richmond. Overby, however, would not only become the first woman to be hired by the Board of Education for a leadership position in the schools, but she would go on to lead two schools in the system. Her life causes us to re-examine what we really know about the lives, contributions, successes and failures of black women educators in general. Whereas we know a great deal more than we use to about the lives of major public black women educators like Mary McLeod Bethune and Anna Julia Cooper, there is still more to know, particularly about how their personal lives were shaped by the context and how women such as Overby addressed issues of race, class and gender in their personal lives. The key questions that guided this research were: Who is Ethel T. Overby? Why did she become the first African American woman principal? How did that role impact her personal life? And what do we really know about her contribution as an educational leader?

Author

• Adah L. Ward Randolph, Ohio University