Black History Month: North Texas Educators
In honor of Black History Month, we are highlighting just a few of the incredible Black educators in Dallas and Fort Worth history. Original authorship credits belong to Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, Black Past, and the Texas State Historical Association.
Dallas Educators
Dr. Mamie L. McKnight
Source: DTRHT 2020 Report
Dr. Mamie L. McKnight (1929 - 2018) was an influential historian, scholar, and educator. Born in Dallas in 1929, McKnight was trained as a research scientist and mathematician at some of the best HBCU programs in the country, however, no defense firm wanted to hire a Black woman. At the age of 25, she published an article on the prismoidal formula, used to calculate the volume of prisms, pyramids, and wedges, in a journal of the National Scientific Honor Society, Beta Kappa Chi. McKnight became an educator at Lincoln High School and Madison High School and founded the organization Black Dallas Remembered Inc., which helped to preserve historic African American sites and history in Dallas County. Dr. McKnight fought the Texas Department of Transportation and the City of Dallas’s decision to expand the Central Expressway, destroying the Freedman’s Cemetery, where more than 8,000 of Dallas’ earliest Black residents were interred, and her organization worked to relocate the graves and helped to establish the Freedman's Memorial. Mcknight also worked to preserve the home of civil rights leader Juanita Craft and served on the Dallas Landmark Commission and the Texas Historical Commission.
A. Maceo Smith
Source: DTRHT 2020 Report
Antonio Maceo Smith (1903 - 1977) is one of the most important people in the history of Dallas and the United States. Known as 'Mr. Civil Rights’, Smith was an educator, advertising agent, real estate agent, activist, organizer, and publisher of The Dallas Express. Smith worked with the NAACP's legal team on the voting rights lawsuit Smith v. Allwright, which ended legal white primaries in the U.S. A. Maceo Smith also battled racial segregation in schools in the Sweatt v. Painter lawsuit, a case that ended educational segregation in Texas and paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education. He was also one of the signers of a national document to demand justice for Recy Taylor after her rape by white men in Alabama. A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School in South Dallas (now Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy at A. Maceo Smith) and the A. Maceo Smith Federal Building in downtown Dallas are named after him.
Fort Worth Educators
Hazel Harvey Peace
Source: Black Past, adapted from Peace’s full bio by Gayle W. Hanson
Hazel Bernice Harvey Peace (1903-2008) was a Fort Worth educator with a career spanning nearly fifty years. Peace held the positions of teacher, debate team coach, counselor, dean of girls, and vice principal. After retiring from the Fort Worth Independent School District in 1972, Peace served until 1982 as director of student affairs at Bishop College in Dallas, Texas. She also taught at Paul Quinn College in Waco (prior to the school’s relocation to Dallas in 1990), Huston-Tillotson College in Austin, and Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View. Peace passed away in 2008 at 105 years old. In 2009 the city of Fort Worth opened the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods, a new municipal building that is a central part of the Evans and Rosedale Business and Cultural District, and in 2010 the Fort Worth Independent School District opened Hazel Harvey Peace Elementary School.
I.M. Terrell
Source: Texas State Historical Association, adapted from Terrell’s full bio by Gayle W. Hanson
Isaiah Milligan Terrell (1859–1931), was a Texas education, health, and church leader. In 1882, Terrell was selected by Fort Worth's Superintendent of Schools to be the head of the first free public school for African-Americans. In 1890, Terrell was named Principal and Superintendent of Colored Schools. In 1915, he became the fifth principal of Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College. In 1918, Terrell was made president of Houston College in Houston's Fourth Ward. In 1923, he became superintendent of the Union Hospital. He retired in 1925 from Houston College and then began work to secure funding for the new Houston Negro Hospital. At its dedication in 1926, he was made the first superintendent and, in 1928, became superintendent emeritus. Terrell died in 1931 in Houston, Texas. I.M. Terrell High School in Fort Worth, buildings at Prairie View A&M University, and the Houston Negro Hospital (Riverside General Hospital) all stand as monuments of his efforts and achievements.
