Hidden Figures: Fanny Jackson Coppin #BlackHERstoryMonth 6/28 (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Fanny Jackson Coppin #BlackHERstoryMonth 6/28

Born a slave in Washington, DC, Fanny Jackson's freedom was purchased by her aunt at age 12. Fanny Jackson spent the rest of her youth working as a servant for author George Henry Calvert, studying at every opportunity and getting schooling whenever she could. By age fourteen, she was supporting herself in Newport, Rhode Island, and struggling for education. “It was in me,” she wrote years later, “to get an education and to teach my people. This idea was deep in my soul.” She attended Rhode Island State Normal School and in 1860, she enrolled in Oberlin College in Ohio, the first college in the United States to accept both Black and female students. During her years as a student at Oberlin College, she also taught an evening course for freed Black Americans in reading and writing. She graduated with a Bachelor's degree in 1865. After her graduation in 1865, Fanny Jackson was appointed to the Institute for Colored Youth, a Quaker school in Philadelphia that is now known as Cheyney University. In 1869 she became head principal, making her the first Black American female principal of a school in the United States. In a letter to Frederick Douglass in 1876, she explained her commitment: “I feel sometimes like a person to whom in childhood was entrusted some sacred flame…This is the desire to see my race lifted out of the mire of ignorance, weakness and degradation; no longer to sit in obscure corners and devour the scraps of knowledge which his superiors flung at him. I want to see him crowned with strength and dignity; adorned with the enduring grace of intellectual attainments.” While running the institute for colored youth, she expanded the curriculum to include an Industrial Department, established a Women’s Industrial Exchange to display the mechanical and artistic works of young women, and founded a Home for Girls and Young Women to house workers from out of town. Moreover, she persuaded employers to hire her pupils in capacities that would utilize their education. In 1881, she married Rev. Levi J. Coppin, a prominent A.M.E. minister, and together they were a driving force in Black America. In 1893, Coppin was one of five African American women invited to speak at the World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago, with Anna Julia Cooper, Sarah Jane Woodson Early, Fannie Barrier Williams, and Hallie Quinn Brown. Mrs. Coppin retired from running the Institute of Colored Youth in 1906, due to health concerns. She died on January 21, 1913, at the age of 76. In 1926, a Baltimore teacher training school was named in her honor as the Fanny Jackson Coppin Normal School, and it is now known as the HBCU Coppin State University. In her last years, she completed her autobiography, "Reminiscences of School Life," where she recounted her work as a lifelong advocate for the education and social uplift of Black American women and girls. #HiddenFigures #FannyJacksonCoppin ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com Snapchat: sssseren GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching by Fanny Jackson Coppin (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Teaching-African-American-1910-1940/dp/0783813961 FANNIE JACKSON COPPIN (1837-1913): https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/coppin-fannie-jackson-1837-1913/ Fanny Jackson Coppin: https://www.coppin.edu/fannyjacksoncoppin Fanny Coppin Biography: https://www.biography.com/people/fanny-coppin-9257156 Little Known Black History Fact - Fanny Jackson Coppin: https://blackamericaweb.com/2018/03/07/little-known-black-history-fact-fanny-jackson-coppin/ Fanny Jackson Coppin (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Jackson_Coppin