"Georgiana Rose Simpson"(March 31 1865?-January 27 1944)

Educator and first African American woman to receive a PhD in the United States, was born

Catherine Simpson.Little is known about her parents other than that her father was born in Maryland and her mother in Virginia.Georgiana was the oldest of six children and she had three brothers and two sisters.She attended segregated public schools in Washington, D.C.,and in 1885 graduated from the Miner Normal School, a training college for black elementary school teachers.From the 1870s through to the 1940s, the Miner Normal School, which eventually became Miners Teacher College,was responsible for training the majority of black elementary school teachers in Washington,D.C. In the nineteenth century, African Americans had few educational opportunities, but the white educator Myrtilla Miner solicited funds from the abolitionists, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, and opened a school in Washington, D.C., to train African Americans as teachers. In 1863 the U.S.  Congress incorporated the school,and it evolved into a competitive teachers college, especially under the leadership of Dr. Lucy Moten,an African American who ran the school from 1883 to 1920. Eventually the school became part of the University of the District of Columbia.After graduating from Miner, Georgiana taught in a Washington, D.C.,elementary school and continued her education through private instruction.In 1896 she traveled to Rostock Germany,where Rostock University, founded in 1491, was located. She studied German language and literature,but it is not clear if she attended the university or received private instruction. When Georgiana returned to the United States in 1897, she became assistant principal of the Miner Normal School, working with Dr. Lucy Moten.In 1901 she left Miner to teach German at the District's farmed Dunbar High School,where  she taught for thirty years. Dunbar High School had evolved from the M Street High School, the first high school in Washington for African Americans, which began in basement of a church in 1870.The school, though lacking adequate space and equipment,became one of the premier high schools in the nation.It later relocated to better facilities and was renamed Dunbar High School.Most universities in the North recognized the academic excellence of Dunbar graduates and waived the special entrance examination that was the usual requirement for African American students.While teaching at Dunbar, she attended summer sessions at Harvard University,Clark University, and the University of Chicago.In 1920 she received a MA and PhD from the University of Chicago,graduating cum laude in 1921, making her the first African American woman to receive a PhD Segregation prevented black academics from gaining professors in universities and colleges, so many of those scholars and academics taught at Dunbar High School. By 1923 three of Dunbar's teachers held a PhD-one of these was Georgiana.Her studies at white universities in the United States subjected her to prejudice,while studying at the University of Chicago, her accommodations in a university residence caused some southern students to threaten to resign.In the University of Chicago archives there is a handwritten autobiographical account by Breckenridge's, a white educator at Chicago at the time, that reports that after Georgiana arrived at the residence hall, she was asked to take her meals in her room, as many of the southern could not conceive of "eating in the same room with a colored student."Days later  they complained that Georgiana  had a room in what  was a "white only residence." Sophonisba reports in her papers that the controversy drew the attention of Harry Pratt Judson, president of the University.Sophonisba informed Harry that none of the university literature stated the residences were only for whites.Nevertheless Harry met with Georgiana,and while no record remains of their meeting,Georgiana moved out of the university residence. Where she resided while doing her academic work at the University of Chicago is unknown.In addition to racial prejudice,she experienced false charges stemming from the anti-German hysteria that swept the United States during World War 1. Because she taught German,witch-hunters charged her with being progerman and investigated her activities to determine her loyalty to the United States. Georgiana prevailed and retorted that it was smart to study the language and culture of the enemy.She wrote in her doctoral dissertation on the German poet Johann Gottfried Von Herder's concept of das volk or"folk." Throughout her teaching career, Dr. Simpson advocated for teaching African  and African American history.She did postdoctoral work in French and consequently edited Toussaint L'Ouverture, a book, published in 1929,on the Haitian independence leader.She was a friend of Frederick Douglass,and upon his death, she lived with his widow, Helen Pitts Douglass home in the Washington,D.C., neighborhood of Anacostia at historical site.In 1931 Dr. Simpson left Dunbar High School and became an associate professor of German at Howard University,and in 1939. In addition to her work at the university,she was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the American Dialect Society, the American Association of University Professors. According to her obituary in The Journal of Negro History,she was a lifelong member of the First Congregational Church in Washington, D.C. Dr. Simpson is described in her obituary as a " scholar"and "a woman of Christian character" living "according to Christian ideals." She was a vegetarian,believing physical health important to good character.She died in her home. Although she often travrled and studied at various universities, Georgiana lived and taught in Washington, D.C.,all her life. In 1976 the National Association of Black Professional Women awarded her a posthumous achievement award.