Brown, Charlotte Hawkins, 1883-1961

Charlotte Hawkins Brown (June 11, 1883-January 11, 1961) was born in Henderson, North Carolina, the daughter of Caroline Frances Hawkins and Edmund H. Hight. The family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the late 1880's, where CHB attended public schools. During her senior year of high school Alice Freeman Palmer, formerly president of Wellesley College, encouraged her to attend the State Normal School at Salem and provided financial support. In 1901 CHB accepted a job as teacher in a one-room school in rural Sedalia, North Carolina. It was this school that CHB transformed, with the help of many contributors, into an accredited school and junior college and renamed Palmer Memorial Institute (PMI). In 1911 CHB married Edward S. Brown, also a teacher; they had no children and were later separated. CHB became a nationally recognized educator and received honorary doctorates from Howard, Tuskegee and other universities. She was active in the National Council of Negro Women, the N.C. Teachers Association, and many other organizations, and she was the first black woman to serve on the national board of the Young Women's Christian Association. She lectured and wrote about Negro women, education, and race relations. CHB remained president of PMI until 1952. She died of heart failure in Greensboro, N.C., in 1961.

For additional biographical information, see #1-29 in this collection, and the article about CHB in Notable American Women (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), which includes a list of additional sources.

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