Hattie Beverly
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Hattie Beverly (1875 – 1904) was the first African American schoolteacher in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
[edit] Biography
Hattie Beverly was born in Decemeber, 1874 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, daughter of John W. Beverly (b. ca 1844, Virginia, d. ca 1926), an African American butcher/ businessman, and Johanna Mina "Minnie" Ruesink (b. October 24, 1847, Aalten, Netherlands, d. 1894), a Dutch immigrant. Hattie was the second of four daughters. When she was one year old the family moved from Wisconsin to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In 1895 Beverly graduated from Grand Rapids Central High School majoring in Prepatory English hoping to become a teacher. At this time Grand Rapids had a cadet program to train unmarried women to teach in its schools. Beverly entered this program after high school, graduating in 1899. When it became time to hire her for a teaching position some members of the school board wondered whether an African American should be permitted to teach, and it appeared that she may be denied. After her proponents prevailed, she was hired at Congress Elementary School in June of 1899.
In February 1902 she married Major E. Robinson. Since married women were not permitted to teach, she resigned her position at Congress School. About that time she contracted tuberculosis which worsened after the birth of her daugther, Ethel. In 1904 she travelled to a sanitarium in Las Vegas, New Mexico where she succumbed to the disease at 30 years of age.
[edit] Legacy
Beverly's nephew John Burgess (b. March 11, 1907, Grand Rapids, Michigan, d. August 24, 2003), son of her youngest sister Ethel Beverly and Theo T. Burgess, became the first African American bishop in the Episcopal Church in 1970.
Every year the Grand Rapids Community College awards a Hattie Beverly Education Award to an outstanding African American educator in the Grand Rapids area. The 2006 award winner was Robert B. Hurd.
In the fall of 2000, Andy Schrier and Laura Carpenter started the Hattie Beverly Tutoring Center, named in honor of Beverly. It continues to serve Grand Rapids's Southeast Side (specifically the Madison Neighborhood).
