Kathleen Weiler's biography of Maria Baldwin, an important yet little known black female educator in New England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is a welcome addition to the literature on black and female educators. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1856, Baldwin attended Cambridge public schools, where she excelled and graduated from Cambridge High School in 1874 and their teacher-training program the following year. She later became the first black teacher and principal of the predominately white Agassiz Elementary School in Cambridge (1881–1922). Along with her two siblings, Baldwin grew up in a financially secure, middle-class family; her father was a postal worker, a high-status position for a black man. By virtue of her father's occupation and their education, Baldwin's family was part of a small group of black elites in Cambridge and Boston.
One of Weiler's challenges in her study of Baldwin is the lack of primary sources. Maria Baldwin left no papers, and letters from her are scarce. Hence, Weiler's portrait of Baldwin is based on her public image and writings about her. She relies primarily on Baldwin's speeches and mentions of her in the minutes of literary, educational, civil rights, and women's organizations in which Baldwin held membership and leadership positions. Much of the book is thus based on suppositions and assumptions. However, Weiler does an excellent job of putting her theories into historical context. Her suggestions as to what Baldwin may have thought or done seem reasonable.
Until Baldwin was hired as a full-time teacher in the Cambridge Public Schools at Agassiz Elementary in 1881, neither Maria nor her sister, Alice, two years younger, had been able to obtain teaching positions in the Cambridge schools. Maria had been a substitute teacher in 1875 as a part of her training, but she could not find a full-time position and eventually moved to Delaware for a full-time position in a black high school following the passing of their mother in 1884. Weiler notes that sources (unsubstantiated) report that Baldwin taught in the South in a segregated school in the years prior to being hired in Cambridge. In her attempt to secure a position in Cambridge, she appealed to a well-known white male in town to assist her in securing a teaching position. He responded that she should remain teaching black students who could benefit more from her talents.
Weiler notes that Baldwin was appointed at Agassiz after two black women had been turned down for teaching positions in 1880, leading to protests from the black community. Once on the faculty, Baldwin distinguished herself as a teacher at a school populated by the children of Harvard professors and other prominent white citizens of Cambridge. When the principal of the school retired in 1889, Baldwin was appointed to replace her. Baldwin's appointment as principal of a white school with all white teachers was historic, and it allowed most white citizens in Cambridge to boast that the city was race-blind. Baldwin, however, remained the only black teacher in the school for decades. The fact that she supervised twelve white teachers in a school with a white student body was significant.
Baldwin was popular with well-educated and prominent whites and was a member of numerous white organizations, such as the 20th Century Association of Boston, a group of white reformers (primarily professors at Wellesley and Harvard). She also frequently received invitations to speak to white audiences. For example, in 1897 she was invited to speak at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences for its annual Washington's Birthday address. She was the first woman and first black speaker invited to give this lecture. It was never clear why Baldwin was so admired and accepted by the white elite. She was clearly a highly intelligent and outstanding teacher, but so were many other black women. Though humble, she was not subservient and was viewed as a great leader, both qualities that could have caused her to be perceived as threatening to whites.
Despite her life in the white world, Baldwin was active in black literary and civic organizations. She was a member of the Omar Circle, a literary club of predominately black men who were graduates of Harvard and other New England colleges, including W. E. B. Du Bois, William Lewis, William Monroe Trotter, and George Forbes. She was a founding member of the prominent black women's club, the Women's Era, the predecessor of the National Association of Colored Women, which included socially and politically active black members such as Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, Flora Ruffin Ridley, and Pauline Hopkins, who, like Baldwin, were concerned with black women's suffrage, lynching, segregation, and more general black inequality. Baldwin was also close to and sympathetic to the activities of the Niagara Movement, a predecessor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which she joined.
Due to the lack of primary source material, Weiler is unable to provide much information about Baldwin's personal life. Her father died in 1881 and her mother three years later, after which her sister, Alice, moved to Delaware. Her brother, seven years younger, then married and moved from Cambridge. The family home was eventually sold, and in 1905 she moved into a boarding house for working women in Boston. Baldwin was the only black woman in the home and probably had the highest professional status. She lived in this home in a single room until her death in 1922.
Despite Baldwin's significant accomplishments, in many ways the reader ends up viewing her with great sadness. Baldwin's appointment at the Agassiz School was viewed as a major accomplishment for black progress, but while this may have been a significant achievement for the race, Baldwin appears to have paid a high price for this racial breakthrough. While most of the other prominent black clubwomen and activists were married to prominent men and had children, Baldwin remained single and lived alone. While being single isn't a tragedy, she spent nearly the last two decades of her life living in a single room in a boarding home, something unthinkable for a woman of her stature. She was not part of any established church and her siblings lived in other cities. She did, however, teach in the summer school conferences for teachers at the Hampton Institute, the black college in Virginia. Had she taught in the South to black students as her sister ultimately had to do in Delaware, she would have had a much fuller life. Many single black professional women throughout the South led full lives with friends, family, church, and other activities.
Weiler's biography of Baldwin is an excellent book that fills a significant gap in the literature on black women educators in New England.
