Mary Jane Patterson

Mary Jane Patterson (September 12, 1840 – September 24, 1894) is widely regarded as the first African-American woman to receive a B.A degree, in 1862.^[1] She was a trail blazing educational leader, being the first Black principal of the Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Washington DC.^[2][3][4]

Early life and education

Mary Jane Patterson was the oldest of Henry Irving Patterson and Emeline Eliza (Taylor) Patterson's children. There is conflicting data on how many siblings she had, but most sources cite between seven and ten. Henry Patterson worked as a bricklayer and plasterer who gained his freedom from slavery in 1852, twelve years after Mary was born, in 1840. The family fled north from Raleigh, North Carolina, settling in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1856. Oberlin was known as an abolitionist town^[2][5] and had a large community of black families; some freed slaves and some fugitive slaves. The town was a popular place to settle as, from 1835, Black men could enroll at Oberlin College and, from 1837, Black women could also. Thus the town then had a racially integrated liberal arts co-ed college allowing both African American young men and women to get a good education.^[6] Four of the Patterson children graduated from Oberlin College and all four became teachers.^[7][8] Henry Patterson, who as a child was friends with future US president Andrew Johnson,^[9] then worked as a master mason. For many years the family boarded large numbers of black students in their home.

Patterson did not follow the usual two year course for ladies at Oberlin.

"Mary Jane Patterson not only was the first black woman in the United States to earn a college degree, she did it by spurning the usual courses for women at Oberlin, and taking instead a program of Greek, Latin, and higher mathematics designed for 'gentlemen.'"^[10][5]

The influential abolitionist Lucy Stanton Day Sessions was a fellow Oberlin alumni alongside Mary Jane Patterson. Stanton graduated twelve years before Patterson but was not enrolled in a program offering the equivalent degree.^[11]

Teaching career

After graduation, Patterson was listed as teaching in Chillicothe, Ohio. On September 21, 1864, she applied for a position in Norfolk, Virginia at a school for black children. On October 7, 1864, E. H. Fairchild, principal of Oberlin College's preparatory department from 1853 to 1869, wrote a recommendation for an "appointment from the American missionary Association as a ... teacher among freedmen." In this letter he described her as "a light quadroon, a graduate of this college, a superior scholar, a good singer, a faithful Christian, and a genteel lady. She had success in teaching and is worthy of the highest ... you pay to ladies."^[12]

Although the African American educator Fanny Jackson Coppin had graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor's degree three years after Patterson, in 1865 Patterson became an assistant to Coppin at the Philadelphia's Institute for Colored Youth (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania).^[13] In 1869 to 1871, Patterson taught in Washington, D. C., at the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, known today as Dunbar High School (Washington, D.C.). Dunbar was the first public high school for African Americans in the USA.^[2][14] Patterson served as the school's first Black principal, from 1871 to 1872. She was demoted and served as assistant principal under Richard Theodore Greener, the first black Harvard University graduate and father of Belle da Costa Greene.^[15] When Greener left after one year, Patterson was reappointed as principal and served from 1873 to 1884. During her administration, the school flourished.^[16] It grew from fewer than 50 students to 172,^[17] the name "Preparatory High School" was dropped, high school commencements were initiated, and a teacher-training department was added. Patterson's commitment to thoroughness as well as her "forceful" and "vivacious" personality helped her establish the school's strong intellectual standards.^[18] In 1884, the administrators of the school decided however that the school had grown to a size better headed by a male principal so Patterson was forced to step down. She continued to teach at the High School however until her death.^[19][20] While in Washington D.C., Patterson lived with her sisters, Emma and Chanie, and her brother, John at 1532 Fifteenth Street Northwest. In the late 1880s Patterson's parents came to live with them due to financial difficulties. Neither Patterson nor her sisters ever married.

Other pursuits

Patterson was a humanitarian and active in many organizations. She devoted time and money to Black institutions in Washington, D. C. Her obituary in the Evening Star said she "co-operated heartily in sustaining the Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored People in this city and other Kindred organizations."^[21][22] Patterson also worked with Mary Church Terrell to form the Colored Woman's League of Washington D.C., which was committed to the "racial uplift" of colored women.^[23] The league later became the National Association of Colored Women. The league focused on kindergarten teacher training, rescue work, and classes for industrial schools and homemaking.^[24][15]

Death and legacy

Patterson died at her Washington, D. C. home, September 24, 1894, at the age of 54. She is recognized as a pioneer in black education, paving the way for other black female educators and leaders. Her life was spent giving young African Americans the same educational chances that she had been granted at Oberlin College.^[6] Her old home is on the route of Washington, DC’s historic walking tour.^[17]

In 2019, a scholarship was established in Patterson's name as part of the California State University, Long Beach, Teachers for Urban Schools project.^[25]

Quotation

“She was a woman with a strong, forceful personality, and showed tremendous power for good in establishing high intellectual standards in the public schools. Thoroughness was one of Miss Patterson’s most striking characteristics as a teacher. She was a quick, alert, vivacious and indefatigable worker.” (Mary Church Terrell, Oberlin alumna, Journal of Negro History July 1917)^[26]

Further reading

Jessie Carney Smith, ed., Notable Black American Women, Book 1 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1992)

Dorothy Sterling, We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984)

Mary Gibson Hundley, The Dunbar Story (1870-1955) (New York: Vantage Press, 1965)

Weatherford, Doris. American Women's History. (New York: Prentice Hall, 1994)

Baumann, Roland M. 'Patterson, Mary Jane.' in African American National Biography. Eds. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham.(W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and Oxford University Press, 2013)

References