Charlotte Hawkins Brown
Founder and Fifty-Year Leader of Palmer Memorial Institute
1902–1952
How this work helped shape America
Born in Henderson, North Carolina, in 1883 to descendants of enslaved people, Charlotte Hawkins Brown used education and institution-building to expand opportunity for Black students in the Jim Crow South. In 1902 she founded Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia after the rural school where she taught was closed. Brown raised money, built a campus of more than 200 acres and guided the school from agricultural and vocational instruction into an accredited college-preparatory institution with liberal arts, cultural education and character development. Her fifty years of leadership created a nationally recognized Black school whose graduates entered professional and public life.