Charlotte Hawkins Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute

the long version

"In the fall of 1901, Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883-1961) jumped off a Southern Railway train in the unfamiliar backwoods of Guilford County, North Carolina. She was black, single, and barely eighteen years old and had come alone from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin her first real job as a teacher at a small, struggling school for African Americans."--BOOK JACKET. "She stayed for over half a century. When the failing school was closed at the end of her first year, Brown remained to carry on. With virtually no resources save her own energy and determination, she founded Palmer Memorial Institute, a private secondary school for African Americans. In the fifty years during which she led the school, Brown built Palmer up to become one of the premier academies for African American children in the nation. Of the hundreds of African American schools operating in North Carolina around 1900, only Palmer gained national renown, outlasting virtually every other such school."--BOOK JACKET.