Hazel Harvey Peace

Hazel Bernice Harvey Peace (August 4, 1907 – June 8, 2008) was an African-American educator, activist, and humanitarian in Fort Worth, Texas. The namesake of an elementary school, municipal building, and library youth center in Fort Worth, Peace overcame racial segregation to provide opportunities for African Americans, youth, and women in Fort Worth, Dallas, and throughout the state of Texas.

Early life and education Hazel Bernice Harvey Peace was born August 4, 1907, in Waco, Texas, to Allen H. and Georgia Mason Harvey; the family moved to Fort Worth three months later. Peace's father was a Pullman porter on the Missouri and Pacific Railroad, and her mother was a homemaker who also owned a children's clothing shop. An only child and considered a prodigy, Peace was reading at the age of four. She attended James E. Guinn Elementary School through sixth grade, then went to high school at the Fort Worth Colored School, graduating at the age of thirteen. An active reader, she spent much of her time at Fort Worth's segregated Carnegie Public Library, where she could check out books, but not stay and read them.

She attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C., where she became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first black sorority in the United States. Graduating in 1923, Peace returned to Fort Worth to teach at her alma mater, by then renamed I.M. Terrell High School, while still a teenager herself. Between school years, she attended summer classes at Columbia University in New York, living at the YWCA in Harlem during the height of the Harlem Renaissance.

Career

"Mama Hazel" Hazel Harvey married contractor Joe Peace (1908–1959), a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, in 1938. She spent nearly 50 years at the school, first as a teacher, then as counselor, dean of girls, and, finally, vice principal. She taught whatever subject was needed, including English, drama, debate, and history. Peace launched a children's theater at I.M. Terrell, where kids from local black elementary schools could attend plays, as well as a debate club. Due in part to Peace's tireless efforts to make up for the segregated school's lack of resources, I.M. Terrell became known for the quality of its college-prep curriculum and for producing most of Fort Worth's black middle class. Known locally as a "monument to black accomplishment," jazz musician Ornette Coleman, Texas state legislator Reby Cary, Harvard professor James Cash, Jr., and legendary Fort Worth journalist Bob Ray Sanders are among Peace's former students. She was the chair of the Mayor's Task Force on Housing, the Near Southeast Citizens Commission, and the Near Southside Neighborhood Advisory Council.

Honors Peace was presented with Fort Worth Human Relations Commission's Humanitarian Award in 1977 and 1985.

In 1992, Hazel Harvey Peace received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Texas Wesleyan University, and Fort Worth Public Library's youth center was named after her. In 2001, Peace participated as an Olympic torchbearer in advance of the Salt Lake City winter games. In 2007, the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Science created an endowed professorship in children's library services in Peace's honor, the first in Texas to be named after an African American woman.

Death and legacy

The Fort Worth Public Library held a public celebration for Peace's 100th birthday in 2007. She died on June 8, 2008, at the age of 100 and was buried alongside her husband at Cedar Hill Memorial Park in Arlington, Texas.

Peace made a lasting impact on Fort Worth and the educational community, leaving the proceeds of her estate to Howard University, Texas Wesleyan University, the Fort Worth Public Library Foundation, and Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Elementary School.

In 2009, the City of Fort Worth named its newest municipal building, the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods, in honor of this local neighborhood advocate. In 2010, Fort Worth ISD opened the Hazel Harvey Peace Elementary School in southwest Fort Worth.