Martha Louise Morrow Foxx

Martha Louise Morrow Foxx (October 9, 1902 – 1985) was an American educator who worked at the Piney Woods Country Life School campus of the Mississippi Blind School for Negroes for forty years, from 1929 to 1969.

Early life Martha Louise Morrow was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, the daughter of Frank Morrow and Hattie Morrow. Foxx became partially blind in infancy, from an eye disease. She entered the Governor Morehead School for the blind as a young child, until her family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when Foxx was eleven. There she was enrolled in the Overbrook School for the Blind, later beginning college at Temple University.

After her first year she moved to Piney Woods, Mississippi to begin her career. In the summers after starting there she attended West Virginia State College, University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Hampton Institute, where she completed her bachelor's degree.

Career

Piney Woods Country Life School

Foxx was instrumental in founding the Mississippi Blind School for Negroes on the Piney Woods School campus in April 1929.

In 1945, Helen Keller visited the Piney Woods School and appeared before the state legislature to appeal for funding. In 1950, the new Mississippi School for the Blind for African American students was completed and moved to its new location on Capers Street in Jackson, Mississippi where Foxx was the principal.

Teaching methodology Foxx's teaching philosophy embraced a very modern dynamic of learning outside the walls of the classroom and of incorporating nature into lessons. She often took the children into the surrounding woods to hunt for plums and to pick wild berries. Ernestine Archie, a graduate of the school's first class of 1934, recalled Foxx's determination that the visually-impaired students be allowed to enjoy outings just as the sighted students did and that their senses of touch, taste, sound and smell made up for the deficiency in sight. Archie recalled how the dynamic teacher also claimed that these forays into nature sharpened the blind students’ "sixth sense," honing their spirits as well as their minds. Utilizing what at the time were progressive techniques, Foxx taught her students to read Braille and special large-print books. In Rankin County, Mississippi, there is a historic marker about Foxx, placed in 2009 near the site of Piney Woods School.

Personal life Martha Louise Morrow married Alexander Foxx in 1937. She died in 1985, in her eighties.