Ruth Wright Hayre

Ruth Wright Hayre (October 26, 1910 – January 30, 1998) was an American educator and administrator based chiefly in Philadelphia public schools in Pennsylvania. In 1946 she was the first African American to teach full-time at a high school in the district and, in the late 1950s, the first to be promoted to principal of a high school. After she retired, she was appointed to the Philadelphia Board of Education. In 1991 Hayre was chosen as its first female president, serving through 1992.

Early life She was born Ruth Wright on October 26, 1910, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Charlotte (Crogman) Wright and Richard R. Wright Jr. Her family settled in West Philadelphia. Her paternal grandfather was Richard R. Wright, also a teacher and educator. Wright was appointed in 1891 as founding president of Georgia State College, a historically black college (HBCU), which he developed for three decades, serving as president until 1921. It was authorized in 1890 by the state legislature as a public land-grant school for blacks. He and his wife emphasized education for their children. Other members of her extended family were also well-educated.

In Philadelphia, Hayre attended schools in the city that had predominately white students. In 1933 Hayre moved to Dayton, Ohio, where she taught at Dalton High School. Three years later she moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught at the Armstrong Industrial High School.

In 1963 Hayre was promoted to a higher administrator position, to supervise a district of the city's public educational system. While she led the district, Hayre worked to upgrade its facilities and advocated for "more inclusion of black history" in the curriculum. She retired from teaching in 1976 or 1978.

On December 2, 1983, she was selected for the Philadelphia Board of Education. She was chosen as president in 1991 and 1992, the first woman to hold this position on the Board. Hayre helped the board respond to the AIDS epidemic, increasing sex education and instituting the distribution of condoms to prevent transmission of disease.

Retirement and death In 1988, The program was named "Tell Them We Are Rising" after a line in "Howard at Atlanta", a John Greenleaf Whittier poem, that was based on Hayre's grandfather Wright's life.

The program offered to fund the college education of the selected children if they stayed in school and got into college. The "Rising" program resulted in sixty students graduating from high school: of these thirty-nine attended either two or four-year colleges, and twelve entered technical schools. Temple University later studied the program. It determined that students enrolled in it increased their numbers on an honor roll and the number of dropouts from high school decreased.

A mural was created in her memory and unveiled in 2018 at a Philadelphia elementary school. The Ruth Wright Hayre scholarship was also created in her memory, and provides financial support to college-bound students.