Ethel Martin Bolden

Ethel Evangeline Martin Bolden (December 14, 1918 – October 20, 2002) was an African-American librarian, educator, historian, and community leader.

Bolden educated generations of residents in Columbia, South Carolina. Bolden established libraries in Columbia's Black elementary schools and emphasized collecting books about Black history. She wrote, "It is now an established fact that the lack of a knowledge of the history of black Americans does harm not only to blacks but to whites as well. A lack of black history leaves the white student only half educated in American history, and only half prepared for the American future." Her dedication continued when she integrated Dreher High School as its head librarian in 1968.

Early life and education

Ethel Evangeline Martin was born December 14, 1918, in Charleston, South Carolina to Ethel Sinkler and Thomas John Martin. Her father moved to Chicago, Illinois during the Great Migration in the early 1920s, but was severely injured in a streetcar accident. Her mother moved the rest of the family to Columbia, South Carolina, where she was hired as the superintendent of the Fairwold Industrial School for Delinquent Negro Girls, an organization founded in part by Celia Dial Saxon.

Martin spent time between her mother's house in Columbia and Peak, South Carolina, where her paternal grandmother ran a missionary school. Her mother died in 1927, followed by her grandmother in 1929. Martin and her younger brother then lived with various relatives.

Martin attended Booker T. Washington High School from 1932 to 1936. She also attended Barber–Scotia College, where she worked as a library assistant. She received her Bachelor of Science from Johnson C. Smith University.

Bolden completed her Master of Science degree in library science from Atlanta University in 1959, after writing her master's thesis on Susan Dart Butler.

Career

She worked at Waverly Elementary school as an "intern teacher" for one year before she married Charles F. Bolden in 1941, and had to leave because married women could not be teachers.

In 1944, she became Waverly's first teacher-librarian, where she taught students part-time and established the first Black elementary school library in the city. She continued to supervise the establishment of libraries in most of the city's other Black elementary schools. She became the first librarian at W.A. Perry Middle School.

In 1968 she became the head librarian at Dreher High School. Her belief in free education for all students led her to open up the library's collection.

Bolden served on the staff of an institute held by Allen University, "Institute for Elementary Librarians" in 1969, where she gave a lecture titled "Evaluation, Selection and Acquisition of Materials for the Elementary School Library."

Family and personal life

Martin married Charles F. Bolden, Sr. (December 16, 1917 – October 18, 1979), in 1941. They remained married until his death in 1979.

They had two children, Charles F. Bolden, Jr., and Warren M. Bolden. Her older son, Major Charles F. Bolden, Jr. is a former administrator of NASA, a retired United States Marine Corps major general, and a former astronaut who flew on four Space Shuttle missions.

Bolden joined the Ladson Presbyterian Church, Columbia's oldest African-American church. Later, she was a founding member of Northminster Presbyterian Church.