Deborah Wolfe

Deborah Cannon Partridge Wolfe (December 22, 1916 — September 3, 2004) was an African American educator, minister, and Education Chief of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor. Humbly self-described as a "teacher and preacher", Wolfe was a woman of many accomplishments in her field, an education reformer, and a pioneer who challenged racial and gender barriers.

Early life

Wolfe was born Olive Deborah Juanita Cannon on December 22, 1916. Reverend David Wadsworth Cannon was educated at Lincoln University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and was the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Cranford, New Jersey.

Wolfe worked many jobs to earn money for her commute to school, which she made by train, her tuition, and her books. She taught piano, tutored her fellow students, worked in the cafeteria, and did secretarial work for her professors. to pass innovative and comprehensive education legislation. The work that she did in that position originated Head Start, financial aid, community colleges, and modernized vocational education. Her role was to coordinate all matters related to education coming before the committee, to educate members about the bills, and to liaise between the House of Representatives and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare on education issues. During this time, Wolfe helped pass into law the Economic Opportunity Act, also known as the War on Poverty, the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

Wolfe stayed in her position as Education Chief until 1965. At that time, her son was graduating from high school in Cranford, New Jersey, and she felt that he needed her. She returned to New Jersey and resumed her work at Queens College, involving herself in many committees and school groups, including sponsoring the Kappa Delta Pi chapter there and participating in the International Honor Society in Education.

Retirement and personal life

By the time Wolfe retired from Queens College, she had been married twice; first in 1940 to Henry Roy Partridge, a specialist in agricultural and commercial dietetics whom she had met at the Tuskegee Institute, and then to Alvis Wolfe, a business executive, in 1959. Her marriage to Mr. Wolfe ended in 1966.

In the early 1960s, Wolfe also played an active role in the civil rights movement, and had in fact advocated for the rights of African Americans throughout her career. In her retirement from her career as an educator, Wolfe was still very involved in a number of civil rights and advocacy groups, including a membership in the NAACP, her vice presidency of the National Council for Negro Women, and her position as the Grand-Basileus of the African American sorority Zeta Phi Beta. She participated in the famous march down Constitution Avenue, and was seated two rows behind Martin Luther King Jr. when he made his famous speech, "I Have a Dream."

In 1970, Wolfe was the first African American woman ordained by the American Baptist Church, and beginning in 1975, Wolfe served as the associate minister at the very same First Baptist Church of Cranford, New Jersey where her father had served before her.

She remained involved with many organizations, and was the president of the National Alliance for Black School Educators, member of the Advanced Education Committee for the Graduate Record Examination, education area representative for the American Association of University Women, and was the first African American Woman fellow of the Commission on Science Education for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was the Vice President of the National Alliance for Safer Cities, an official non-governmental organization represented at the United Nations, and was the first person to serve on both the New Jersey State Board of Education and the New Jersey State Board of Higher Education simultaneously. She was the only African American member on the Seton Hall University Board of Regents, and served on the advisory board to the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College. While involved with Radcliffe College, she was on the Advisory Committee to the Black Women Oral History Project, and was interviewed herself as part of that project.

Death and legacy Deborah Cannon Partridge Wolfe died on September 3, 2004. She has been awarded twenty-six honorary doctorate degrees, and is honored by a number of educational institutions who have named buildings in her honor, including a High School at the Tuskegee Institute, a building at Trenton State College, and Cranford High School, where she herself attended. Her papers are held by Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts.