Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2019/Fall/Section 1/Mary Wright Hill

Mary Wright Hill

Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2019/Fall/Section 1/Mary Wright Hill
Born	Asheville, North Carolina
Died	1946 Athens, Georgia
Occupation	Primary School Principal

Overview

Mary Wright Hill was interviewed for the Federal Writer’s Project in 1939. At this time, she was principal of a primary school, the first Black woman in Athens, Georgia to hold that position.

Biography

Private Life

Mary Wright Hill was born on March 6, 1881 in Asheville, North Carolina to parents of mixed race, both originally from Greenville, North Carolina. Her ancestors were black, Native American, and French. Her father, a contractor, moved the family to Atlanta during a building boom, and Hill and four of her siblings studied at Atlanta University. Her fifth sibling, a brother, was educated at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and followed in her father’s footsteps as a contractor in brickmaking. Following her father’s death when she was seven, Hill’s mother began struggling with health issues, eventually going blind and losing mobility. Her mother encouraged her to marry, and Hill did before moving to Athens, Georgia, where she had two daughters, Viola and Nanette, before her husband died. She remarried after her daughters left the house for college, but divorced her husband, citing his spoiled and lazy personality. Her third husband worked as an interior decorator, and they lived in the same house she bought after her move to Athens. Hill died at the age of 65 on November 26, 1946 in Athens, Georgia.

Professional Life

Due to her mother’s illness, Hill could not afford medical school so she accepted an offered teaching position in Oxford, Georgia at the age of 13, in order to both educate and financially support her siblings. After two years in this position, she accepted a similar job as a teacher in Athens, Georgia, and two years later was elected principal of East Athens School, becoming the first female elected principal in Athens among all races, as well as the first female black principal. People did not always respect her position, as evidenced by men who asked her superintendent for her job, assuming that it was an open position since it was held by a woman. Beyond these inherent sexist barriers, Hill was forced to undertake additional duties besides the traditional role of a principal, such as acquiring running water and earning her nursing degree through the mail to care for sick students, due to the poverty of her black school. The school was directly affected by the Great Depression because its population decreased as blacks moved north due to the lack of well-paid employment in the South for them. These inequalities in elementary education had repercussions in later life. For example, after graduating Fisk University, Hill’s oldest daughter was one of only two black women selected to study in Europe with an otherwise entirely white group, and, during the preparations for this trip, Hill refused to eat in an Athens hotel with the white social worker assisting her daughter because she did not want to cause “a stir”. As a comparison to her daughter, Hill maintained that she missed her opportunity to visit Europe because she never worked for a white woman, thereby never developing the connections her daughter did. Finally, in addition to her duties as principal, Hill taught illiterate adults because Georgia ranked quite low for adult literacy.

Social Contexts

Inequality in Segregated Schools

Students in a segregated school in Charles County, Maryland in the early 1940s

During the Great Depression, the Supreme Court Case Plessy v. Ferguson was still in effect, ruling that separation by race in schools, public transportation, bathrooms, and other facilities was legal, as long as such separation was “equal”. In segregated schools, equality was rare, with black schools suffering from poorer materials, less funding, and overall inadequate quality. However, recent studies show that the communities built in black schools may have actually aided in student success, despite inherent inequalities. For example, black students helped to teach each other, which is proven to aid in subject mastery. Additionally, teachers with close ties to the community of their students positively affected their education, as did the continuity and longevity of teachers’ careers. Black schools also developed tight-knit cultures, with well-trained teachers and principals who created a culture and vision rooted in uplifting the race, as well as extracurricular activities that supported this goal. Therefore, while segregated schools were inherently and unjustly unequal, on a deeper level, black educators and parents utilized personal and community connections to develop a system of education that nurtured students by emphasizing culture, community, and the individual.

Literacy during the Great Depression

In the South, both before and after the Great Depression, literacy rates for adults were rather low. In order to combat this issue, grassroots movements, often spearheaded by women, arose to improve illiteracy rates among adults. Two women, Elizabeth Cleveland Morriss and Cora Wilson Stewart, exemplified the determination, resilience, and creativity of the founders and instructors of these movements. In 1911, Stewart became a pioneer for adult education reform with the founding of the Moonlight Schools, an evening education program that drew 1,200 people to a first session where only 150 were expected. The Moonlight Schools ran for 23 years, teaching 700,000 adults and relying on volunteer teachers and donors. Following Stewart’s example, many similar programs sought to address adult illiteracy in different communities across the nation. Morriss instituted her program in Asheville, North Carolina in 1919, focusing, like Stewart, on the implementation of adult education programs at a local level first. She eventually expanded her programs and policies to county and state agencies, where leaders of the program were still women, underpaid or volunteers, who exhibited a great commitment to Morriss’s overall mission. Individually, these grassroots adult education programs displayed varying levels of success, but their institution during the Great Depression allowed the national adult literacy rate to rise significantly due to the great dedication and tenacity of women from Morriss and Stewart to local volunteers.