Black History Month: Honoring Black Leaders Who Were Blind or Visually Impaired

Harriet Tubman was born in 1819 in Dorchester County, Maryland. Born into slavery, she was raised under terrible conditions. As an adolescent, she suffered a head injury that left her visually impaired. Despite all of the social and physical barriers, she became one of the most famous people in American history.

Harriet escaped enslavement in 1849, and relocated to Philadelphia. There, she joined the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society and became a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad. During her ten years working the Underground Railroad, she made 19 trips and helped over 300 people escape enslavement.

Martha Louise Morrow Foxx was born in 1902 in Charlotte, North Carolina. She became partially sighted when she was an infant, and later attended Governor Morehead and Overbrook Schools for the Blind. After her graduation in 1927, she went off to college. At the end of her first year at university, she was offered a teaching position at the Piney Woods Country Life School in Mississippi. She then expedited her studies to receive a bachelor’s degree over the summer.

The Piney Woods Country Life School was the first school in the state with a department to educate Black, blind students. When Martha began her position at Piney Woods in 1929, she was the sole educator and caretaker for the ten students in the program. 

Martha had a very hands-on, practical approach to teaching. "You learn by doing" was her teaching philosophy. In her curriculum, she incorporated community-based lessons, independent living, the arts and music, work-experience, and the outdoors. She was truly a forward thinker in the word of education, and was not only an teacher of students, but a teacher of teachers.

Later, along with Helen Keller, Martha advocated for the funding of educational opportunities for Black and blind students, resulting in two new schools for the blind being built in Jackson, Mississippi.

Freddie Peaco was born in North Carolina in the 1940’s. When she was about six years old, doctors discovered a visual impairment and later she attended Governor Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, NC. In 1961, she continued her education in Washington DC, earning her bachelor’s degree from Howard University and her master’s degree from American University. 

Freddie had a long and productive career working at the Library of Congress, National Library Service or the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), where she advocated for the production of accessible versions of documents, coordinated the production of publications, and represented the NLS at workshops and national conferences.