People, Locations, Episodes

Josephine Bruce, Teacher, and Activist born

Josephine Bruce

Josephine Bruce, a Black teacher and social activist, was born on this date in 1853.

Josephine Beall Willson Bruce was born in Philadelphia, PA.  She was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Dr. Joseph Willson, a dentist and writer, and Elizabeth Harnett Willson, a musician.  After graduating from Cleveland’s Central High School in 1871 and completing a teachers training course, Willson was the first Black to join an integrated Cleveland elementary school faculty.  In 1878, she married Blanche K. Bruce, a senator from Mississippi.

The couple moved to Washington, D.C., and started a family together. While assisting in her husband's political career moves and raising their only child, Bruce held a prominent place in the social life of Washington’s Black elite and aided several ventures to promote the welfare of African America.  She was a strong advocate of industrial education for the Black masses to overcome obstacles in the path of racial progress. Following the death of her husband, Bruce became the female principal at Tuskegee Institute.  1899 she moved to Mississippi to manage her family’s cotton plantations.

She returned to Washington D.C. when her Harvard-educated son became assistant superintendent in the district’s black schools. An early leader and advocate of the club movement among Black women, she was a founder of the Booklovers’ Club, the Colored Woman’s League, and the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Josephine Bruce spent the last few months of her life in Kimball, WV, where her son had become a school principal. At the age of seventy, she died on February 15, 1923.

To become a High School Teacher