Anna Evans Murray

Anna Evans Murray
Anna Evans Murray, c. 1876
Born	Anna Evans 1857 Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.
Died	May 5, 1955 Washington, D.C., U.S.
Alma mater	Oberlin College
Known for	Early childhood education
Spouse(s)	Daniel Alexander Payne Murray
Children	7

Anna Evans Murray (1857–1955) was an American civic leader, educator, and early advocate of free kindergarten and the training of kindergarten teachers. In 1898 she successfully lobbied Congress for the first federal funds for kindergarten classes, and introduced kindergarten to the Washington, D.C. public school system.

Anna Evans was born in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1857. She was one of eight children of Henry Evans, an African-American undertaker and cabinetmaker, and Henrietta Leary Evans, a woman of French and Croatan descent. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1876.

Evans came from a family of activists. In 1858, her father was one of a group of men who were arrested for attempting to free a runaway slave from a U.S. marshal. The incident became known as the Oberlin–Wellington Rescue. Her uncle, Lewis Sheridan Leary, was killed in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and her cousin John Anthony Copeland, Jr., was hanged with Brown. Years later, her mother delivered an address at Harpers Ferry at the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement, a civil rights group founded by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Her sister, Mary Evans Wilson, was one of Boston's leading civil rights activists. Mary's husband, Butler R. Wilson, was a prominent civil rights attorney and president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

After college she moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught music at the Lucretia Mott elementary school and at Howard University. Her experience at the Mott school convinced her of the need for free kindergarten and for special training for kindergarten teachers. Starting in 1895, as chair of the Education Committee of the National League of Colored Women (NLCW), she campaigned for the establishment of free kindergarten classes for black children in Washington D.C. The League established six or seven local kindergartens, and in October 1896, she took over the management of a normal school founded by the NLCW to train kindergarten teachers. In 1898, she successfully lobbied Congress for federal funds to introduce kindergarten classes to the Washington D.C. public school system; it was the first time federal funds had been allocated for kindergarten education.