E’ry day this month, Philly’s 7th Ward, in partnership with the Center for Black Educator Development, will highlight a “Black Educator Hall of Famer.“ But, don’t forget, e’ry month is Black History Month. February is just the Blackest. Every day is an ongoing opportunity to learn and teach the colossal impact Black educators have had on society.
Dr. Jeanne Noble
Dr. Jeanne Laveta Noble was born on July 18, 1926, in Albany, Georgia. Noble was raised by her mother and grandmother, who emphasized the importance of a quality education. Noble’s grandmother, Maggie Brown, was a first-grade teacher for 50 years and emphasized the importance of education in preventing poverty.
Noble earned her bachelor’s degree from Howard University in 1946. While at Howard, she learned from esteemed educators, including E. Franklin Frazier, Sterling Brown, and Alain Locke. She graduated at 19. She earned her master’s degree and chose to return home to teach. Upon meeting the president of Albany State College, an HBCU, who asked her to teach summer school, she “fell in love with teaching and never left [the field].”
She was part of the Albany State faculty from 1948 to 1950. From 1950 to 1952, Noble served as Dean of Women at Langston University, another HBCU. From there, she returned to Columbia full-time to pursue her doctoral degree in educational psychology, which she completed in 1959. She even studied at the University of Birmingham in England.
She was immediately hired by New York University to teach in the Department of Educational Sociology. She is the first Black woman to advance from assistant professor to full professor at the New York University School of Education. Her scholarship produced several important works. She co-authored College Education as Personal Development in 1960, authored The Negro Woman College Graduate in 1970, and Beautiful, Also, Are the Souls of My Black Sisters in 1978.
Her career included serving as a visiting lecturer and dean across the country; publishing peer-reviewed articles; serving on numerous boards, including the National Board of the Girl Scouts of the USA; serving as president of organizations, including Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; and being appointed to special positions by Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. She has also received a number of awards, including an Emmy in 1970 for a CBS show called “The Learning Experience,” was named a member of Ebony Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Negroes of the Emancipation Year (1963), and has received numerous honorary doctorates.
She died on October 17, 2002. At the time of her death, Noble was a professor emeritus at the City University of New York (CUNY) and at Brooklyn College. Like the women of her life, she believed in the power of an education, especially higher education. For Noble, “College offers a student fresh opportunities to learn, to explore new ideas about [themselves, and] to modify those [they] already [have].”
Happy Black History month and make sure you read up more on Jeanne Noble.
