Olivia A. Davidson

Olivia America Davidson Washington (11 June 1854 – 9 May 1889) was born free as Olivia America Davidson in Virginia. After her family moved to the free state of Ohio, she studied in common schools and later college. She became a teacher and educator.

Davidson was hired by Booker T. Washington as a teacher and assistant principal of the Tuskegee Institute from 1881. In this role she also did fundraising and gave public speeches, especially about the education of African-American women. In 1886 she married Washington, the principal, as his second wife; they had two sons together and reared his daughter by his first marriage. She died young of tuberculosis.

Olivia America Davidson was born on June 11, 1854 in Mercer County, Virginia, now Mercer County, West Virginia, to a free woman of color and a man who had been freed from slavery. Her father was Elias Davidson, who worked in agriculture. She had at least two sisters and a brother. When Olivia was still a child, her family left western Virginia because of the discriminatory treatment of free blacks and moved to Ironton, Ohio, in a free state. Some time after her father Elias died, the family moved to Albany, Ohio. Davidson continued to study at common schools. By 1870, she was living with her sister Mary and brother-in-law Noah Elliot in Gallipolis. Her sister, a dressmaker and milliner, relocated several times before settling in Columbus, Ohio.

In 1870, at the age of sixteen, Davidson began teaching in parts of Ohio, Mississippi, and Arkansas, spending some time in Spencer, Mississippi. In 1874, she became a sixth-grade teacher in the new Clay Street School in Memphis, Tennessee (now the Booker T. Washington High School). Her sister Margaret was also a teacher here and her brother Joseph lived and worked in the city. Her principal instituted changes recommended by Davidson. While she was in Memphis, her sister Margaret died. In 1878 her brother Joseph was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, at a time of violence to suppress black voting. Davidson returned to Ohio shortly thereafter.

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