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Friday, September 27, 2013

"Lucy Ellen Moten"{1851-August 24, 1933}

Was born in Fauquier County,Virginia,near White Sulphur Springs,the daughter of Benjamin Moten a U.S.Patent Office clerk,and Julia Withers.taking advantage of their status as free African Americans,the Motens moved to the District of Columbia when Lucy was only a child to secure the best possible education for their precocious daughter.Lucy attended Washington's pay schools until 1862,when she was admitted to the district's first public schools for African American.After attending the preparatory and normal departments of Howard University,she began teaching in the primary grades of the local public schools and taught there continually,except for a two-year interruption, from 1870 until 1883.In 1873 Lucy moved to Salem,Massachusetts,to attend the State Normal School,from which graduated in 1875.In 1883 Frederick Douglass recommended that Lucy be appointed to fill the vacant principalship of the Miner Normal School,a public teacher training institution for African Americans primary teachers in the District of Columbia.Although impressed with her experience and academic credentials,the members of the Board of Trustees of the Miner School were concerned that her youth and physical attractiveness made her unsuited for such a responsible position.Only after she assured the trustees that she would refrain from theatre going, card playing,and dancing were they convinced that she was the right person for the job.From 1883-1920 Lucy ran the Miner Normal School with an iron hand.She was a strict taskmaster.who demanded that her students maintain the highest personal and professional standards.She never challenged them, to do anything that she was unwilling to do herself and over time won their universal respect.Lucy strongly urged the students with whom she worked to continue to educate themselves. She maintained a high standard in this regard by spending much of her spare time away from Miner furthering her own personal development.The same year she assumed the principalship at Miner,Lucy graduated from the Spencerian Business College with honors.She worked closely with Alfred Townsend,a well-known elocution teacher,to sharpen her public speaking abilities. She participated in countless professional conferences to increase her stock of pedagogical knowledge.Lucy believed that all teachers should know something about health,physiology,and anatomy and attended medical school at Howard University to master these subjects,earning her MD in 1897.Lucy employed the medical knowledge she had accumulated by initiating a series of lectures at Miner on health and hygiene.She spent many of her summers in the South teaching in vacation schools for veteran work in education at New York University.Lucy's energy ane enthusiasm for teaching were legendary and inspired at least two generations of African American educators in the District of  Columbia.During the thirty-seven years that she was the principal of Miner Normal School,Lucy took an active part in preparing most of the African American primary teachers subsequently employed in the Washington Public Schools.She became so successful,in fact,in furshing African American teachers for the District of Columbia that by 1890 the local school board was recommending that prospective teachers from around the country enroll at Miner to benefit from her outstanding leadership.To maintain the highest education standards,Lucy moten worked unceasingly for more rigorous admissions standards,smaller class sizes,and a larger,better-trained,and better-compensated faculty.Most of all she sought to make Miner curriculum more demanding and relevant.In 1896 she successfully expanded the school's program from one successfully expanded the school's program from one to two years,by the end of her tenure she had laid the foundation for extending the program to a full four years.Lucy probably worked hardest to ensure that the teachers with whom she worked were as committed to character development as they were fostering academic success.This meant that she expected them to maintain  habits of strict integrity and intellectual honesty,to be models,of self-control and patience,and to remain sympathetic and cheerful at all times,and to cultivate a refined aesthetic taste.To Lucy,manners,morals,and intellect were equally important,especially for teachers preparing to instruct the very young.Her dignity,grace,and decency remained the moral standard by which her students proudly gauged their own contributions to the profession of teaching. In 1914 Miner Normal School opened a new building modeled on a design suggested by Lucy.An avid traveler and Anglophile,she had long admired the architectureof Christ's College at CampbridgeUniversity and urged the architects who planned the new Miner facility to base their design on this well-known English College.Lucy also insisted,often over the objections of the board of education,which worried about the added expense,that the classrooms and hallways be well ventilated and well lighted and that in general the new building reflect the latest technology regarding the conditions most conducive to good education. After Lucy retired she lived most of the rest of her life in New York City and never married.She died tragically in 1933 when a taxi struct her in New York's Times Square.Even in death her contributions to education continued.She left fifty-one thousands dollars to Howard University,requesting that the money be made available to students wishing to visit and study abroad.Finally,in recognition of Lucy's important impact on primary education in the District of Columbia, a Washington elementary school was named for her in 1954.

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