"Maria Louise Baldwin."(September 13,1856-January 9,1922)

Was an African American educator and civic leader born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Maria was born to Peter L.and Mary E. Baldwin,and received all of her education in Cambridge's schools.In 1874,she graduated from Cambridge High School and a year later she graduated from the Cambridge training school for teachers.Maria first taught in Chester town, Maryland for two years.In 1881,she was hired as primary grade teacher in [Grammar School of Cambridge.In 1889,Maria became principal of the school.In 1916,as a new Agassiz school was erected to include higher grades.Maria was made master,supervised twelve teachers and five hundred students, all white.She was one of only two women in the Cambridge school system who held the position and the only African American in New England to hold such a position.She served as master of Agassiz school for forty years.Under her leadership,the school of Agassiz became one of the best in the city,attended by children of Harvard professors and many of the old Cambridge families.Maria introduced new methods of teaching mathematics and began art classes.She was the first to introduce the practice of hiring a school nurse.Her school was the only one one in the city of Cambridge to establish an "open-air"classroom.One of students,poet e.e.Cummings described her thus in his book Six Nonlectures.Maria was always a student.She took many classes at Harvard University and other colleges.She also was an instructor who taught summer courses for teachers at Hampton institution in Virginia and the institute for colored youth in Cheyney,Pennsylvania.She belonged to enormous civic and educational organizations including the twentieth Century Club,Cantabrigia Club,the Boston Ethical Society,and the league of women for Community Service.She lectured widely and spoke throughout the country on such luminaries as George Washington,Abraham Lincoln,and Thomas Jefferson and on such themes as women's suffrage,poverty,and history.While she was addressing the council of the Robert Gould Shaw house Association at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, collapsed and died of heart disease.On February 12,2004,Agassiz,School was officially renamed the Maria L. Baldwin School.