Papers of Charlotte Hawkins Brown, 1900-1961

African American educator, civic leader, and activist, Charlotte Hawkins Brown was born on June 11, 1883 in Henderson, North Carolina, to Caroline Frances Hawkins and Edmund H. Hight. She was named Lottie at birth and her brother Mingo was the namesake of their enslaved grandfather. By the late 1880s Brown's mother had remarried and in 1888 the extended family, which included her mother, stepfather Nelson Willis, and other relatives, moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to escape oppressive Jim Crow laws. In Cambridge, they found greater social, economic, and educational opportunities, which included operating a boarding house for Harvard students and a hand laundry. Brown attended local schools where she excelled in her studies and developed life-long leadership skills. She also earned money by creating crayon portraits for her friends, babysitting, and assisting in the laundry.

Brown's senior year at the Cambridge English High School brought many unexpected changes. Although she had expressed a strong interest in attending Radcliffe College, her mother believed that additional schooling was unnecessary. Brown changed her academic goals after meeting Alice Freeman Palmer, former president of Wellesley College, who encouraged her to attend the State Normal School in Salem, Massachusetts, and provided financial support. She also changed her name to Charlotte Eugenia in the belief that it was more elegant than her birth name.

In 1901, while still attending Salem State, Brown was approached by a field secretary of the Women's Division of the American Missionary Association and offered a teaching position in the rural South. The old, dilapidated school where she worked was located in Sedalia, North Carolina, and closed after a year, but the experience inspired Brown to establish her own educational facility at or near the site.

Following graduation in 1902, she initiated the first of many fundraising requests that helped to build and expand what came to be known as the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute, named for her mentor. Over several decades she developed a circle of financial supporters that included the Palmers, educator Booker T. Washington, Charles Eliot, president of Harvard University, Carrie and Galen Stone, Boston philanthropists, and many others. Their contributions helped the Institute evolve from a vocational school to an accredited preparatory and junior college for African American students. It also helped to expand the campus, which grew to include 14 buildings situated over more than 200 acres.

In 1911 Brown married Edward S. Brown, a Harvard graduate who also taught at the Palmer Institute. Although the couple had no children of their own, they played an instrumental role in raising six children belonging to various family members, including Maria Cole, Brown's niece, who eventually married famed singer Nat King Cole. The couple divorced in 1915.

In addition to her administrative oversight of the Institute, Brown gained national recognition for many other accomplishments. She continued to take classes at Harvard University, Simmons College, and Temple University. She was also a founding member of the National Council of Negro Women, the North Carolina State Federation of Negro Women's Clubs, and the North Carolina Teachers Association. She was the first Black woman to serve on the national board of the Young Women's Christian Association and lectured and wrote extensively about Black women, social uplift, the value of education, anti-lynching measures, and race relations. According to one of her biographers, following the publication of her book, The Correct Thing to Do, to Say, to Wear, Brown became known as "The First Lady of Social Graces." Recognition of her influential work generated numerous awards and honorary doctorates from Howard, Tuskegee, and other universities.

Brown served as president of Palmer Memorial Institute for 50 years until her retirement in 1952. She continued to act as the school's financial director and was a member of the board until she died of heart failure on January 11, 1961. Financial problems eventually led to the closure of the Palmer Memorial Institute in 1971, but her legacy of achievement is embodied in the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Historical Foundation, which was built on the school's campus and incorporated in 1983.