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Ruby M. Forsythe, Educator born

Ruby M. Forsythe

Ruby Middleton Forsythe was born on this date in 1905.  She was a Black educator.

Ruby Middleton was from Charleston, SC.  She earned her license of education instruction certificate from Avery Institute, which had been created in 1865.  Avery Institute for Grammar and High School Avery epitomized excellence and provided its students with the best liberal education and cultural experience.  She received her BS from South Carolina State College and started teaching in 1956 at the Mount Pleasant Laing School, run by the American Missionary Society.

She married the Reverend William Essex Forsythe, an Episcopal priest, who was in charge of Holy Cross-Faith Memorial Church and School on Pawley's Island.  She stayed to care for her parents until 1937, visiting her husband frequently in the summers.  She also taught with him in North Charleston Schools.  In 1938, she began teaching in a one-room school on Pawley's Island, the only educational facility available to Black people. She continued to teach at Holy Cross-Faith Memorial School until she retired in 1981.

Known to many as Miss Ruby, she said of the pieces of her life as an educator: “You got to start with little things that are not in the book to teach respect. Today's schoolteacher must be a mother, father, counselor, everything. Most children have nobody to sit down with them and teach them the little things right from the things that ‘Let’s Talk,’ because their parents don’t have the time.”

She also summed up her legacy to education and to the people of the island, where she taught for much of the 20th century, by affirming that she sowed "the best seed into whatever soil we come into contact with, watching the growth, and the reproduction of the product sent forth."

Ruby Middleton Forsythe died in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina, on May 29, 1992.

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