Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson

Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson (April 26, 1900 – May 28, 1991) was an educator and school administrator known for her innovative teaching methods. One of the first African-American female schoolteachers in Boston, she developed the city's first remedial reading program in 1935, and was an early advocate of black history education.

Early life and education

Wilhelmina Marguerita Crosson was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, on April 26, 1900, to Charles Tasker Crosson and Sallie Alice Davis Crosson. She was the fourth of nine children. In 1906 she moved with her family to Boston, where she attended the Hyde School and Girls' High School in Roxbury. She earned a B.S. degree in education at Boston Teachers College in 1934 and a master's degree in educational administration from Boston University in 1954.

Career Crosson began her career in 1920 at the Hyde School in Boston's North End, teaching remedial reading to the children of Italian immigrants. She was one of the first African-American women to teach in the Boston public schools.

One of the first American teachers to recognize the need for remedial reading classes, she developed Boston's first remedial reading program in 1935. Crosson's pioneering methods were so successful that administrators and other teachers were regularly sent to observe her classes, and she was invited to lecture on the subject.

In 1933, Crosson published a groundbreaking article in the Elementary English Review titled "The Negro in Children's Literature". It was the first article in a mainstream American teaching journal asking teachers to celebrate African-American culture, and the first article by a self-described "Negro" author to appear in the journal.

In the article Crosson recommends the teaching of "Negro literature" (which she defines as works by, for, and about black people), reasoning that black children should not be deprived of the literature of their own race, and that all children would benefit from the experience:

Surely, it is important for the American schoolchild to know something about the literature of this black race which came to America a little over three hundred years ago, and has become an important and integral part of this nation.

She recommended the teaching of African-American history, presenting the achievements of African Americans such as Harriet Tubman alongside those of whites, proposing that this would "...make the Negro child strive to lift his race to higher levels, and the white child feel that the Negro race has played its part in the making of America." Upon her return, she began teaching at the all-black Hyde School in Roxbury, where she made many changes in the curriculum and inspired a love of reading in her students. She also volunteered as a Sunday school teacher at the Twelfth Baptist Church, and taught black history lessons on Saturdays. Sojourner Truth award, Boston and Vicinity Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs, 1969 Dolly Madison award, Greensboro, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce, 1971 Boston Afro-American Griot Award, Boston College, 1985 Honored by Action for Boston Community Development, 1985 Wilhelmina M. Crosson Scholarship fund, Twelfth Baptist Church, Boston, 1991 She is mentioned in connection with the League of Women for Community Service on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.