Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown. Educator, Lecturer, Social Worker, and Religious Leader. , Charlotte Hawkins Brown was the founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute, a private preparatory school for African American children in Sedalia, North Carolina., Charlotte, born in Henderson, N.C., was the daughter of Carole Hawkins and Edmund H. Hight. Her father deserted them, and Charlotte and her extended family of nineteen moved to Cambridge when she was seven. When her mother married Nelson Willis, a laborer, they settled in a traditionally black neighborhood in the "lower Port," first on Hastings Street near Kendall Square, then on Clark near Main Street. The family moved to Essex Street about 1901., Brown, who showed great promise, was successful at finding mentors to encourage her. She started a Sunday school kindergarten at the Union Baptist Church and, like her friend Maria Baldwin, graduated from Cambridge English High School., Her mother discouraged her from attending Radcliffe College, so at the urging of Alice Freeman Palmer, a member of the state board of education, Charlotte attended the Massachusetts State Normal School in Salem. In 1902, after teaching for a year in North Carolina, she started the Palmer Memorial Institute, which she named after her benefactor. The school prepared students to be educationally self-sufficient, religiously sincere, and culturally secure., Brown returned to Cambridge each summer to study and raise money for her school. In 1911, she married Edmund S. Brown, a teacher. In 1917, her parents moved for the last time, to 69 Dana Street. Charlotte continued to return north in the summertime to pursue further studies at Harvard, Wellesley, and Simmons College. A Charlotte Hawkins Brown Club held benefits and mortgage parties at the Union Baptist Church., As her school grew more famous, Brown traveled widely to speak on behalf of African American education and civil rights. She was a vice president of the National Association of Negro Women and a founding member of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, a forerunner of the Southern Regional Council., Brown died on January 11, 1961, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Her school, which closed in 1971, is now the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Memorial State Historic Site., Related Cambridge African American Trail Markers , Maria Baldwin, 196 Prospect Street , Albert V. Scott, 28 Union Street, Sources , Cambridge Public Library photograph collection , Charlotte Hawkins Brown Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College , Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography, 1982 , Jesse C. smith, ed., Notable Black American Women, 1992 , Union Baptist Church archives