Wilhelmina Crosson
| Wilhelmina M. Crosson | |
|---|---|
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| Born | April 26, 1900 Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | May 28, 1991 Boston, U.S. |
| Known for | Pedagogy |
Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson (1900-1991) was an educator and school administrator known for her innovative teaching methods. One of the first African-American female schoolteachers in Boston, she developed the city's first remedial reading program in 1935, and was an early advocate of black history education.
Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson was born in Rutherford, New Jersey on April 26, 1900 to Charles Tasker Crosson and Sallie Alice Davis Crosson. She was the fourth of nine children. In 1906 she moved with her family to Boston, where she attended the Hyde School and Girls' High School in Roxbury. She earned a B.S. degree in education at Boston Teachers College in 1934 and a master's degree in educational administration from Boston University in 1954.
Crosson began her career in 1920 at the Hancock School in Boston's North End, teaching remedial reading to the children of Italian immigrants. She was one of the first African-American women to teach in the Boston public schools. One of the first American teachers to recognize the need for remedial reading classes, she developed Boston's first remedial reading program in 1935. Crosson's pioneering methods were so successful that administrators and other teachers were regularly sent to observe her classes, and she was invited to lecture on the subject.
In 1925 she founded the Aristo Club of Boston, an organization of black professional women who studied and taught black history and awarded scholarships to black children. The Boston school system began observing Negro History Week as a result of the Aristo Club's efforts.
In 1933, Crosson published a groundbreaking article in the Elementary English Review titled "The Negro in Children's Literature". It was the first article in a mainstream American teaching journal asking teachers to celebrate African-American culture, and the first article by a self-described "Negro" author to appear in the journal. In the article Crosson recommends the teaching of "Negro literature" (which she defines as works by, for, and about black people), reasoning that black children should not be deprived of the literature of their own race, and that all children would benefit from the experience:
She also recommends the teaching of African-American history, presenting the achievements of African Americans such as Harriet Tubman alongside those of whites, proposing that this would "...make the Negro child strive to lift his race to higher levels, and the white child feel that the Negro race has played its part in the making of America."
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