Pioneering Feminists of the Civil Rights Movement

Early Life

Hattie Mae Whiting White, first black elected to public office in Houston in the twentieth century, daughter of David Wendell and Hattie (Gooden) Whiting, was born at Huntsville, Texas, on May 22, 1916. When she was six, she moved to Houston with her mother and stepfather. She entered public school there and graduated valedictorian from Booker T. Washington High School. She then attended Houston Colored Junior College (the forerunner to Texas Southern University) and graduated with honors from Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University) in 1936. After teaching at Cameron, Jasper, and Prairie View, she returned to Houston, where in 1941 she married Charles E. White, an optometrist, and settled down as a housewife and the mother of five children (2).

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Activism

In the early 1950s White began to take an active role in civic affairs. She served as president of the William Miller Junior High School PTA, became the first black member of the Metropolitan Council of the Houston YWCA, and sat on the board of the Houston Association for Better Schools (2). After she appeared on local television as an advocate of school desegregation in 1956, blacks and liberal whites encouraged her to become a candidate for the school board of the Houston Independent School District (2).

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Encounter with LuLu White

After listening to a speech made by Hattie White, an educator and community activist, in which she accused the Houston Independent School District (HISD) of discrimination toward its black students, Lulu White and her PAC encouraged Hattie to seek public office when the opportunity presented itself (7). That moment came one month after Lulu White’s death in August 1957, when a vacancy occurred on the School Board. At the time, a group of black leaders, which included Lonnie B.Smith, the plaintiff in the Smith v Allwright case, and Quentin Meese, one of the most outspoken civil rights activists in Houston, invited Hattie White, to dinner. Together they convinced White that the time had come for her to seek an elected post on the HISD Board (7). On September 3, 1958, Hattie White announced her candidacy. White was very perceptive, and on November 4, 1958, she defeated her two white opponents by a narrow majority in an at-large election and became the first black female elected in the state of Texas (2). Her victory prompted a cross-burning on her lawn a few days after the election (2). Undeterred, White became one of the most controversial members of the board and generally the lone voice and only vote supporting desegregation and other progressive policies (2). In 1961 she easily won reelection, and during her third term, which began in 1964, she was part of a liberal coalition that included Gertrude Barnstone and Asberry B. Butler, the second African American elected to the Houston School Board (2).

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Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Texas Legislature in 1968. White retired from active politics.

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School board

White served on the school board for nine years as an outspoken and often controversial critic of the conservative majority that dominated the board during this period. She constantly pressured the board to implement an effective desegregation plan, to accept federal funds for education, and to improve the quality of education in the district’s schools. In 1967 she was defeated in her efforts to win another term in a campaign dominated by charges that she advocated busing to achieve racial balance in Houston’s schools (2).

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White’s three terms on the school board coincided with the initial efforts of the federal courts to desegregate public schools in Houston. Although White achieved few of her objectives, she did help convince the district to accept federal funds, she witnessed some improvement in the status of black employees in the district, and she kept the people of Houston informed about the issues before the board (2). Most importantly, her election in 1958 demonstrated that blacks could win political office in Houston, and it helped promote increased political activity among the city’s minorities.

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Later life

Following her political career, White returned to teaching and retired at the age of seventy. Later in her life she acquired the public recognition that her accomplishments merited. She received the Houston YWCA’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and, most notably, the Houston ISD district headquarters building was renamed the Hattie Mae White Administration Building in her honor. After its demolition in 2006, a new headquarters building was named the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center (2).

 

White died at Methodist Hospital in Houston on July 30, 1993.

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Bibliography

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