Bette and Franke Spriggs Lecture Series: Black Activism before the Civil War

Barbara White was a teacher in the Nantucket Public Schools for 34 years.

 

She holds a Master's Degree from Boston University in African-American Studies, as well as a Master's Degree in Educational Administration from the University of Lancaster in England. Barbara and her family spent a sabbatical year in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt, where she was the academic head of an international school.

 

Barbara received a Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship in 1978 which funded her research in African-American history on Nantucket. Her research resulted in A Line in the Sand: The Battle to Integrate Nantucket’s Public Schools, 1825-1847. Her work brought to light the role that Nantucket played in early civil rights history and helped lead to the preservation of the African Meeting House now owned and managed by the Museum of African American History in Boston. In 2002, Barbara received an award for her work from the Museum.

 

Barbara wrote three books after her retirement. One is Hidden History of Nantucket, cowritten with Frank Morell. She wrote Live to the Truth: The Life and Times of Cyrus Peirce, an early abolitionist who became the director of the first public teacher training school in the nation. Most recently, she wrote Disturber of Tradition: A Portrait of Anna Gardner published by the Nantucket Historical Society where Barbara is a Research Fellow.