"Lottie Hawkins"[June 11,1883-January11 1961]

Born in Henderson,North Carolina,her family moved to Cambridge,Massachusetts,early in childhood to avoid racial discrimination in their home state.In Cambridge,she attended Allston Grammar School,Cambridge English High School and Salem State Normal School in Salem Massachusetts.During her senior year at Cambridge High School Lottie met Alice Freeman Palmer ,who in 1882 was named the first the first woman president of Wellesley College.Alice would become a role-model,mentor and influence on Lottie life.Lottie became Alice's protege as the two women developed a life long bond.Alice assisted Lottie financially in attending Salem State Normal School,a teacher college.In 1901 eighteen year old Lottie accepted a teaching positions in North Carolina offered by the American Missionary Association.She did not graduate from Salem State,Lottie decided to take the post anyway knowing that since there were few educational opportunities for black children she would do what she could to address the problem.In her first year back in her native state,Lottie taught rural black children at Bethany Congregational Church in Sedalia,North Carolina.In 1902,after the school was closed due to financial problems,Lottie,with the assistance of her mentor Alice,established the Alice Freeman Palmer Institute.The school,located in Sedalia,instructed children between the elementary and junior college level.It would operate through the 1950s.In 1911 Lottie married fellow Institute teacher Edward S.Brown.The marriage was brief,she retained his surname and became Charlotte Hawkins Brown.Initially Lottie followed the vocational curriculum of Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute,focusing training and industrial education for rural living.But over the half century Lottie gradually came to embrace liberal arts education.She continued her own formal education as well.While directing the Institute she took courses at Simmons College,Temple University and Wellsley College.In the 1927-1928 school year she was named "special student"at Wellsley College,giving her the freedom to choose any course she wanted without any constraints of degree requirements.As her dedication and efforts in education became nationally acclaimed,Lottie received several honorary degrees and traveled in circles that included Booker T. Washington,W.E.B. DuBois,fellow school founder Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.Besides her work an educator Lottie also became a talented essayist  and short story writer.Throughout her adult life she was a dedicated anti-segregationist and an advocate for African American cultural pride and identity.Lottie died in 1961.Soon afterwards,North Carolina designated the Alice Freeman Palmer institute the first historical landmark of North Carolina identified with an African American.