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Frances Olivia Grant, College Graduation (ciara 1940).

Frances Olivia Grant (June 30th, 1895—1982) born in Massachusetts, was an African-American teacher and black history advocate.

Biography

Grant was born the oldest of two daughters in her household. Being an African American women, Frances citizenship status was not actually recorded. African American peoples were granted citizenship in 1869, but it was still extremely restricted. Frances grew up in one of Boston's elite African American Families as her father, George Franklin Grant, was the inventor of the artificial palate. George Grant was a well known Dentist in Boston and president of the Odontological Society at Harvard.

Life and Career

Frances completed college in 1940 with a plan to pursue education. That same year Grant began as an English teacher in Bordentown, New Jersey making $2940 a year, equivalent to a salary of 64,290 today. Grant would go on to teach for half a century, leaving a lasting impression on her students. Grant was a very active in Bordentown being a member of National Organization of Teachers of Colored Children and the National Association of College Women. Grant devoted most of her time to helping her students inside and outside the classroom, she was passionate about helping students of color succeed. In an interview with Frances from the Black Women Oral History Project, Grant begins, "Today I get cards at Christmas from students I taught fifty years ago, forty years ago." Grant also touches on how for a while Bordentown radios and television were forbidden. "I think also that the controlled environment was valuable, in particular in this situation, because what you tried to do during the day was not undone at night. The public school system means that you have a child for a short period of time... We did not have that to compete with; when he was out, he was still under controlled environment. He could play and he could do; but...there weren't the temptations of the street. Therefore you didn't have that to work against." Frances worked for many years at a boarding school helping children of color become active in the community. She states in her interview that many of the kids enrolling the school were coming from a background of not being involved. Grant was constantly creating extracurricular activities for educational purposes and entertainment.