Page 3 - Florida Sentinel 9-2-22

Feature
The Education Pioneer Receives New Attention For Her Contributions
Everybody in Tampa knows Armwood High School, but information about the name- sake of the school hasn’t been in public view for a long time.
Recently, the life and career of Blanche Mae Armwood are enjoying a renaissance as public interest in the pioneer and activist. The Tampa alumnae chapter of the Na- tional Alumnae Association of Spelman College (NAASC) will honor Armwood at their inaugural gala, ‘Spelman: A Legacy in Blue’, on October 1, 2022.
On next Wednesday, Sep- tember 7, 2022, the Tampa Bay History Center, will offer “The Life of Blanche Arm- wood” as part of the Florida Conversation series. Florida Conversations is free and open to the public thanks to support from the Tampa Bay History Center’s endowment fund at the University of South Florida and USF Li- braries.
To register for in-person or Zoom attendance, go to https://tampabayhistorycen- ter.org/2022/08/01/florida- conversations-the-life-of-blan che-armwood/
Fred Hearns, Tampa his- torian and Curator of Black History for the Tampa Bay History Center, states, “Blanche Armwood lived one of the most significant lives of any Tampa native. Her contributions, especially as the first secretary of the
Urban League of Tampa, and as the first supervisor of Negro education for the county, led to significant and tangible advancement for the students and citizens of the African American commu- nity.”
“Today, most people know about her via Armwood High School, but she did so much more, from teaching to rais- ing money. She also wrote a book on food conservation that was extremely successful among all races and served as a guide during WWI.”
“In 1921, she also helped to elect President Warren G. Harding, a republican from Ohio that was sympathetic to the plight of Black Ameri- cans.”
Blanche Armwood was born on January 23, 1890, in Tampa. Her father was Tampa's first black policeman in the late 1870s and a county deputy sheriff in 1895.
Armwood attended St. Peter Claver Catholic School where she graduated with honors in 1902 at age twelve and passed the State Uniform Teacher's Examination that year. At the time, Tampa did not have a high school for blacks, so she went directly to Spelman Seminary (now Spelman College) in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1906, at age six- teen, graduated summa cum laude from Spelman, earning a teacher's certificate.
In 1918, Armwood pub-
BLANCHE MAE ARMSTRONG
lished Food Conservation in the Home, that is credited as touchstone for American
WWI.
In 1922, Armwood was
named the first Executive Sec- retary of the Tampa Urban League.
In 1926, Armwood was appointed as the first Super- visor of Negro Schools by the Hillsborough County School Board From 1926 to 1934, she was instrumental in the school board's establishment of five new school buildings, improving the older schools, providing a vocational school for black students, increasing black teacher salaries, organ- izing parent-teacher associa- tions at each school, and extending the school year for black students from six to nine months.
In addition to her leader- ship positions in Tampa, Armwood was Chair of the
Home Economics Depart- ment of the National Associa- tion of Colored Women, National Campaign Speaker for the Republican Party, and as State Organizer for the Louisiana Chapter of the NAACP.
Armwood worked closely with anti-lynching advocate Mary McLeod Bethune, including helping to raise funds and other resources for Bethune-Cookman College.
Armwood’s interest in politics and equal rights for blacks and women led her to pursue a career in law. In 1934, Armwood enrolled in Howard Law School, where she earned her Juris Doctor in 1938 making her the first black female from the state of Florida to graduate from an accredited law school.
home economics
during
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