Harold Cressy (1 February 1889 – 23 August 1916) was a South African headteacher and activist. He was the first Coloured person to gain a degree in South Africa and he worked to improve education for non-white South Africans. He co-founded a teachers group which opposed the apartheid

Bantu Education Act The Bantu Education Act 1953 (Act No. 47 of 1953; later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was a South African segregation law that legislated for several aspects of the apartheid system. Its major provision enforced racially-separated educati ...

Life

Cressy was born at the mission at

Rorke's Drift The Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879), also known as the Defence of Rorke's Drift, was an engagement in the Anglo-Zulu War. The successful British defence of the mission station of Rorke's Drift, under the command of Lieutenants John Chard of the ...

on 1 February 1889 to Bernard and Mary Cressy. He first attended the school at the local mission. He then moved to Cape Town at the age of eight, where he eventually qualified as a teacher at the Zonnebloem College in 1905. Harold Cressy graduate

With his new qualification he was able to teach at the Dutch Reformed Church mission school at Clanwilliam in the

Western Cape The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020 ...

. At the same time he furthered his own education and he passed his

matriculation Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination. Australia In Australia, the term "matriculation" is seldom used now ...

meaning that he could, in theory, enter a university. Cressy was determined to get a degree and despite gaining funding he was rejected for racial reasons by two other universities before a Cape Town city councillor, Abdullah Abdurahman, applied pressure to the University of Cape Town. Abdurahman's influence resulted in Cressy being accepted onto a graduate course.Harold Cressy
South African History Online. Retrieved 14 August 2014. He graduated from the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

in 1911 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was the first Coloured person to achieve this distinction.City School turns 100
iol.co.za, January 2012. Retrieved August 2014. Cressy married Caroline Hartog in 1912. In 1912 he was appointed to be the Principal of Trafalgar Second Class Public School in

District Six District Six (Afrikaans ''Distrik Ses'') is a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. Over 60,000 of its inhabitants were forcibly removed during the 1970s by the apartheid regime. The area of District Six is now ...

of Cape Town. The following year he had the pleasure of announcing the first black girl to pass her "School Higher". The girl was Rosie Waradea Abduraghman, Abdullah Abdurahman's daughter. Rosie, Cressy, and the school were lauded in the success report, but the Cape school board was not mentioned because the school still lacked adequate supplies. Cressy continued to work with Abdullah Abdurahman who had helped his career before. With Abdurahman's encouragement he and H.Gordan founded the important

Teachers' League of South Africa The Teachers' League of South Africa (TLSA) was an organization for Coloureds, coloured teachers founded in Cape Town in June of 1913. The group, while originally focused on issues surrounding education, became increasingly political in the mid-1940 ...

and Cressy was appointed president of the organisation in 1913 as well as editing the groups influential publication, the ''Educational Journal''. Cressy died in Kimberley in 1916 from pneumonia.Harold Cressy
Pitzer.edu. Retrieved 14 August 2014. His wife died only a few years later in the

1918 flu pandemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

leaving their daughter, Millicent, an orphan.

Legacy

Cressy's name was chosen when Cape Town Secondary School was renamed in 1953 to be the

Harold Cressy High School Harold Cressy High School is a secondary school in District Six of Cape Town in South Africa. It was founded in January 1951 as the Cape Town Secondary School. The school has played a substantial role in South African history during the aparthe ...

(HCHS). In 2014, HCHS was declared a Provincial Heritage Site under the National Heritage Resources Act of 1999, with a commemorative plaque unveiled on Heritage Day, 24 September."Harold Cressy High School declared a heritage site"
''The Citizen'', 24 September 2014. Retrieved 13 December 2014. The Teachers League of South Africa (TLSA), which Cressy created, became a powerful group. In the 1950s the organisation organised political resistance by South African teachers to the emergence of Bantu education based on apartheid ideals.TLSA
, Liberation Heritage. Retrieved 17 August 2014. In the 1950s Benjamin Kies, a teacher at

Trafalgar High School , motto_translation = As much as I am able , established = , type = Government-funded co-educational secondary day school , pushpin_map = Australia Victoria , pushpin_image = , pushpin_mapsize = 240 ...

, was banned from teaching for life for being involved with the TLSA.Helen Kies
SAHistory Online. Retrieved 17 August 2014.

Life

Legacy

References

Further reading