Charlotte Hawkins Brown
| Charlotte Hawkins Brown | |
|---|---|
Charlotte Hawkins Brown in wedding dress, 1912
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| Born |
June 11, 1883 Henderson, North Carolina |
| Died | January 11, 1961 (aged 77) Greensboro, North Carolina |
| Occupation | Founder of the Palmer Institute |
Charlotte Hawkins Brown (June 11, 1883 – January 11, 1961) was an American author and educator, founder of the Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina.
Brown was born in Henderson, North Carolina on June 11, 1883, but moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts at a very early age. When she was a high school senior, Brown had a chance meeting with the prominent educator Alice Freeman Palmer, who was impressed to find the young woman reading Virgil while pushing the stroller of a child she was babysitting. Palmer would play a profound role in Brown's life, first by paying for her college education at the State Normal School at Salem, Massachusetts, and then by encouraging Brown to return to her native North Carolina to help improve education for African Americans.
After a year of college, Brown was hired to work at the Bethany Institute, a small school in Sedalia, North Carolina, run by the American Missionary Association.
When the American Missionary Association decided to close the school a year later, Brown decided to create a school on her own, which would include elements of industrial training combined with a standard curriculum. She returned to Massachusetts where, through connections provided by Palmer, she met with prominent figures at Harvard and elsewhere from whom she sought to raise money for her effort. She successfully obtained enough money to keep the school running for another year.
The new school started small, in an old log cabin with just two teachers and few students. Brown continued raising money, eventually securing enough to erect a new building, which was completed in 1905. The school was named the Palmer Memorial Institute in honor of Alice Freeman Palmer. While the school grew, it continued to attract attention and money from Boston-area philanthropists. A "Sedalia Club" was organized in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1914, and in the prominent financier and philanthropist Galen L. Stone learned of her work and became the Institute's most important benefactor. Stone and his wife would eventually give more than $100,000 to the Institute. In 1911, Charlotte Hawkins married Edward S. Brown.
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