Hattie Mae Whiting White (May 22, 1916 – July 30, 1993) was an American educator and politician. As the first Black member of the

Houston Independent School District The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is the largest public school system in Texas, and the eighth-largest in the United States. Houston ISD serves as a community school district for most of the city of Houston and several nearby and ...

's board in 1958, she was also the city's first Black elected official in the 20th century.

Early life and education

Hattie Mae Whiting was born in

Huntsville, Texas Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas. The population was 45,941 as of the 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate 45 and home to ...

, the daughter of David Wendell Whiting and Hattie Gooden Whiting. She was raised in Houston, where she attended Booker T. Washington High School and Houston Colored Junior College, and trained as a teacher at Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College. Hisd-hmw-008

Career

Whiting taught school until she married in 1941. She served on the Metropolitan Council of the Houston

YWCA The Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) is a nonprofit organization with a focus on empowerment, leadership, and rights of women, young women, and girls in more than 100 countries. The World office is currently based in Geneva, Swi ...

, and the Houston Association for Better Schools. In 1958, White was elected to the Houston Independent School District (HISD) board, as its first Black member, and as the city's first Black elected official since

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

. Despite controversy and violent racist threats, White was outspoken in favor of

school desegregation School integration in the United States is the process (also known as desegregation) of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and rema ...

and federal funding programs, and was re-elected in 1961 and 1964. She was defeated for re-election in 1967, and in a run for the Texas legislature in 1968. White returned to schoolwork after her political career, and retired from teaching in 1986. In 1985, she gave an oral history interview to Jon Schwartz, for the documentary ''This is Our Home It is Not For Sale;'' the video is now in the audio/video collection of the

University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...

. White was honored with the Houston YWCA's Lifetime Achievement Award. The HISD administration building was named for her, and the current Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center was named in her memory in 2006.

Personal life

Hattie Whiting married optometrist Charles E. White in 1941. They had five children together. She died in 1993, aged 77 years, in Houston.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Hattie Mae Whiting 1916 births 1993 deaths American educators People from Huntsville, Texas School board members in Texas Houston Independent School District Prairie View A&M University alumni Texas Southern University alumni American civil rights activists