Every day this month, the Center for Black Educator Development, in partnership with Education Post and Philly’s 7th Ward, will highlight a Black Educator Hall of Famer.
But, don’t forget, e’ry month is Black History Month and February is just the Blackest. All year are ongoing opportunities to learn and teach and the colossal impact Black educators have had on society.
Today, our featured Black educator is Andrew Foster II.
Andrew Foster II was born on June 27, 1925 in Ensley, Alabama. An unfortunate event happened to Andrew when he was 11; he contracted spinal meningitis and suffered permanent deafness. This happened to both Andrew and his younger brother. As a result, he attended the Alabama School for the Colored Deaf. Sadly, he couldn’t earn a high school diploma while attending because the school didn’t offer a high school curriculum. That setback however did not stop him.
He moved to Detroit to live with his aunt in search of better job opportunities, and while there he continued his education, graduating from the Detroit Institute of Commerce with a concentration in accounting and business administration. He graduated with honors. Additionally, he got his high school diploma through Correspondence School, which offers students education through distance learning. the modern equivalent would be asynchronous learning via online courses.
In 1954, Foster earned a bachelor’s degree in education at Gallaudet University, becoming the first Black person to get a bachelor’s degree in the history of the college. He continued learning, earning his master’s degree in deaf education at Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) a year later, and, in 1956, he received a second bachelor’s degree in Christian missions at Seattle Pacific College.
In 1957, he went to Africa, where he encountered cultures so oppressive of deaf people that parents often hid their deaf children at home or abandoned them altogether – although he was told that deaf children didn’t exist on the continent. Foster founded the Christian Mission for Deaf Africans (later called Christian Mission for the Deaf). Foster started going on speaking tours throughout the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Western Europe, and then 25 African nations to raise funds to establish schools for the deaf in Africa.
Foster set up the first deaf school in West Africa in Osu, a suburb of Accra, Ghana; serving as director of the school from 1957 to 1965. Over the next three decades, with the cooperation of local schools and churches, he founded 31 additional schools for the deaf in Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Benin, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Sierra Leone, Chad, Togo, Zaire, Gabon, Congo, Nigeria, and Kenya.
Foster taught students, trained teachers, educated the public about the needs of deaf Africans, and advised government officials about the need for more schools for the deaf. As a result of Foster’s unwavering efforts, Gallaudet began welcoming the first generation of students from Foster schools in Africa. His dedication to African people and helping them thrive despite having a disability is an inspiration for us to strive on behalf of Black students, no matter the challenges they face.
Andrew Foster II; a member of the Black Educator Hall of Fame.
For more information on Andrew Foster II, visit the following site.
