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Alison M. Parker, Kathleen Weiler. Maria Baldwin’s Worlds: A Story of Black New England and the Fight for Racial Justice., The American Historical Review, Volume 126, Issue 4, December 2021, Pages 1657–1658, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhab632
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Kathleen Weiler’s biography of Maria Baldwin (1856–1922), Maria Baldwin’s Worlds: A Story of Black New England and the Fight for Racial Justice, delves into the life and times of a well-educated woman who became the only Black teacher (1881) and principal (1889) at the white Agassiz Elementary School, a prestigious public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Weiler suggests that Baldwin is less well-known outside New England because she spent her entire career educating white students. Other pioneering Black women educators, such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Nannie Helen Burroughs, taught in segregated schools and are celebrated for educating Black youths. Baldwin broke major professional and educational barriers and viewed herself as a “representative of the race” whose accomplishments stood as proof of African Americans’ capability and equality.
Baldwin made inroads into white Bostonian society at a time in the nineteenth century when, Weiler explains, African Americans made up less than 2 percent of the population in Boston and Cambridge. The small middle-class population was not particularly threatening to elite whites, who accepted one or two Black Bostonians into their clubs and organizations. This allowed them to feel a connection to their noble abolitionist history without forcing them to confront their underlying belief in white superiority. Her brown skin ensured that Baldwin would never physically pass as white, but Weiler argues that her New England education and love of Anglo-American poetry and culture enabled her to be accepted and elevated in white spaces.
