Charlotte Hawkins Brown: singing her own song
"I must sing my song. There may be other songs more beautiful than mine, but I must sing the song God gave me to sing, and I must it sing until death." -- Charlotte Hawkins Brown
Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born in 1883 in Henderson, North Carolina. She was the grandchild of formerly enslaved African people. Charlotte and her family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts when she was very young because Massachusetts was more welcoming towards African Americans than the South. In Massachusetts, she received an excellent education, and that made her want to help others build better lives through education.
In Cambridge, Charlotte attended Cambridge English High School. After she finished high school, she attended Salem State Normal School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, starting in 1900. At Salem State, she studied to become a teacher because she wanted to help children in the South. After one year at Salem State, she left to teach at a small school in Guilford County. The school was in very bad condition, and many students were too poor to own shoes. Charlotte worked hard to improve the school, but it closed after one year.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown still wanted to improve the lives of African Americans in the South, so she decided to stay in North Carolina and open her own school. She worked with friends still living in the north to raise money for a school. The Palmer Memorial Institute opened in Sedalia, North Carolina in 1902. Charlotte named the school after Alice Freeman Palmer, who was a friend and benefactor from Massachusetts. The school began in an old blacksmith shop on the property and later grew to a large campus with many buildings. It became both a day school and a boarding school for African Americans.
The school tried different types of education including teaching students trades. It finally became a school to prepare students for college. Schools for African Americans at the time focused on training for manual labor jobs, but students at Palmer Memorial Institute also studied literature, math, and the arts. Students also had classes in discipline and good manners.
Charlotte Hawkins Brown led the school until she retired in 1952. She died in 1961 in Greensboro, North Carolina at the age of 71. Palmer Memorial Institute continued to operate after her death, but it closed after a fire in 1971.
From 1902 to 1970, more than 2,000 African American students studied at Palmer. Many went on to make important contributions in teaching, the arts, law, medicine, and other careers.
We remember Charlotte Hawkins Brown as a pioneer in African American education. Today Palmer Memorial Institute’s buildings have been restored, and the site and buildings are now a state historic site and museum dedicated to her life. The museum was the first state historic site in North Carolina honoring a woman.
Glossary
benefactor (noun): A person who gives money to help others.
blacksmith (noun): A person who works with hot metal to make things. Blacksmiths were very common and important craftspeople in history, before we had machines and factories to make metal objects.
trades (noun): Jobs requiring special skills to create, fix, or build things. Examples of trades are carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, and welders.
manual labor (adjective): A type of job where someone does hard work using their body. Farming, construction, landscaping, and factory work are all examples of manual labor.
Read and Reflect
1. In what year was Charlotte Hawkins Brown born?
2. What challenges did Charlotte Hawkins Brown face?
3. Why was the school named the Palmer Memorial Institute?
4. How many students studied at the Palmer Memorial Institute between 1902 and 1970?
5. Why was Charlotte Hawkins Brown significant?