Thelma Dewitty (She/Her)

by Eric Tsatouryan (He/Him)

Thelma Dewitty (1912-1977) was the first Black teacher to be hired and teach in Seattle Public School system. This was not just a new job, but a revolution for Black teachers to have new opportunities in the city’s public school system, a door that had always been closed for Black educators.

Born in Beaumont, Texas in 1912, Dewitty had been a lifelong learner and a passionate teacher earning her undergraduate degree at Wiley College, a historically Black college that had educated many Black leaders during the Jim Crow era. After teaching in Texas for over a decade, she moved to Washington to pursue her graduate education at the University of Washington at age 34. After Dewitty had applied to teach in the city, she faced resistance from the school system, which, until this point had never hired a Black teacher. With intervention and support of organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, they were able to push Dewitty as a teaching prospect and turned her effort of becoming a teacher a reality. Dewitty showed her excellence in the classroom and quickly gained the respect of her peers, creating a mathematics book for children soon after. Dewitty taught in the Seattle Public School system for over two decades at multiple schools in the Seattle area including Sand Point, John Hay, and Laurelhurst elementary schools, and retired in 1973 from Meany Junior High School.

Prior to Dewitty being hired, many Black women had to leave the state in order to teach because there were no jobs available in Seattle for Black teachers. It was Dewitty’s hiring that opened the door for Black educators in Seattle breaking the color barrier in education. By choosing to hire an African American teacher, Seattle pivoted from other trends in the nation of discrediting and relinquishing African Americans from being able to teach. Regions like the South and even at the time California were passing and enacting legislation restricting the rights of minority groups. Figures like Dewitty in her efforts helped to continue progress for African Americans and served as a role model not only for the children she was teaching but those who sought to become educators. The influence of Dewitty and countless teachers such as Marita Johnson, Peggy Johnson, and Iva Tolliver had paved the way for social acceptance and modernization of both the Seattle and Washington School systems.