09/03/2023
I'd love to introduce you to Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister (1899‐1996).
Among many distinguished accomplishments, McAllister was the first African American to receive a doctorate in education from the
Teacher's College from Columbia University in 1929.
Jane Ellen (“Ellie”) McAllister was born on October 24, 1899, to Flora (McClellan) and Richard Nelson McAllister in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Her mother, Flora McAllister, was a
teacher at the Cherry Street School in Vicksburg. She was an 1891 graduate of Jackson College, a high school and college founded in 1877 by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to train African American teachers, which later became Jackson State University. Flora was a protégé of Dr. Charles
Ayer, the college’s first president, and spent summers with his family on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. McAllister’s father, Richard McAllister, also graduated from Jackson College and worked as a postal carrier in Vicksburg.
The McAllisters were determined that their children would attend college, but the high school they attended in Vicksburg did not offer geometry and Latin, which were needed to enter college. Richard McAllister borrowed the necessary textbooks from a white family on his mail route and Flora McAllister tutored her children in these subjects at home. Jane McAllister finished high school while still in her
early teens and began teaching school. She then attended Talledega College in Alabama, receiving her bachelor’s degree in 1919. She went on to complete her masters degree at the University of Michigan in 1921, and in 1929 became the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in education from Teachers College at Columbia University. Her thesis was entitled The Training of Negro Teachers in
Louisiana.
McAllister’s sister, Dorothy Marie McAllister, born in 1904, became a librarian, and spent most of her professional life at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her brother, Richard Nelson McAllister, Jr., was born in 1901 and became General Supply Specialist for the General Services Administration in
Washington, D.C.
Following the completion of her doctorate, Jane McAllister served as Professor of Education and Chairman of the Division at Miner Teachers College in Washington, D.C. for over twenty years. She also worked as Instructor in Education and Professor of Education at Southern University and as head of the Education Department at Fisk University. In 1940 and 1941, McAllister served as a curriculum consultant at Jackson College at the request of President Jacob L. Reddix. At the time, Jackson College was transitioning from church to state funding, and McAllister was instrumental in structuring the new
teacher education program. She also developed partnerships between the college and school districts across the state in order to train African American teachers from rural areas. The education program was approved by the state in 1942 and Jackson State once again became a senior college, offering the
bachelor of science degree in teacher education.
In 1951, McAllister left Miner and returned to her native Mississippi to teach at her parents’ alma mater, now called Jackson State College. From the moment she arrived, McAllister was a formidable force in shaping its teacher education program and in bringing Jackson State College to national attention. She
instituted a number of innovative programs on campus that were designed to raise the level of teaching within Mississippi’s black public schools, and was also interested in providing cultural and academic enrichment opportunities for students and teachers from rural areas and disadvantaged backgrounds.
In 1952, McAllister founded the Student‐Sponsored Public Affairs Forum and coordinated the program honoring Jackson State College’s seventy‐fifth anniversary. She was responsible for bringing such notable figures as Averill Harriman, Ralph Bunche, and Chester Bowles to campus. In 1963, she directed the Jackson State College Summer Project Enrichment Program, supported by the Southern Education Foundation and the Fund for the Advancement of Education. During this program, teachers and high school students were housed together in dormitories while studying academic subjects.
McAllister utilized a new communications technology, Telstar II, to transmit lectures from famed scholars, and arranged amplified telephone visits with cabinet officials. She prided herself on having provided her students their first exposure to Greek history and classical studies when she arranged for Professor Moses Hadas, an expert on classical Greek drama, to deliver a tele‐lecture.
Beginning in 1965, McAllister directed the Institute for Teachers and Supervisors of Disadvantaged Youth at Jackson State College during the summers. She also organized a Self Help Opportunity Project for unemployed high school dropouts and an Institute for Principals, Teachers, and Auxiliary Personnel sponsored by the United States Office of Economic Opportunity. She assisted in the planning and
development of the College Readiness Program for prospective college freshman and the Continuing Education Enrichment Program, which operated on Saturdays for high school youth.
In the midst of the civil rights movement, McAllister firmly believed in education as a tool for change. She wrote that teachers who participated in the program “carried back a legitimate hope that they can raise the level of aspiration and can educate children – disadvantaged, deprived and made different by
culture—for newly emerging, non‐discriminatory jobs in government, industry, jobs for the first time fully open to these children.”
McAllister’s professional service extended beyond Jackson State as well. She served as a member of the Accrediting Committee of the Southern Association during two summer sessions, was the only African American on the Board of Experts on Student Teaching, traveled as a delegate to the Conference on Teacher Certification of the National Education Association in 1951, prepared standards as a committee member of the American Association of Colleges in Teaching Education, and was an executive committee member of the National Association of Supervisors of Student Teaching. The boards of trustees at Talladega College and the Penn School also benefited from her committed service. McAllister was appointed by the United State Department of State as delegate to UNESCO in Prague, Czeckoslovakia.
Beginning in 1937, McAllister was the author of numerous articles in the field of education, appearing in such journals as the Journal of Negro Education, Teachers Education Quarterly, Education Journal, Journal of Teacher Education, Educational Leadership, School Executive, Educational Administration and
Supervision, Journal of Secondary Education, and Integrated Education.
In 1969, following two years of sabbatical leave, McAllister retired from Jackson State College. She was named Professor Emeritus in honor of her long service to Jackson State and to the field of teacher education. While continuing to write articles on educational issues, she also traveled to Mexico and
Central America. In 1970, the Mabel Carney chapter of the Student National Education Association and the School of Education at Jackson State College established a lecture series in her honor, the Jane Ellen McAllister Lecture Series. In 1989, in recognition of her achievements, Jackson State named a new
women’s dormitory the Jane E. McAllister and Mary G. Whiteside Women’s Residence Center.
Well into her nineties, McAllister continued to live in her own home in Vicksburg, where she mentored local youth, stayed involved in her church, and tended to her several dogs. She was featured in an photography and historical exhibit curated by David Rae Morris, “My Mind to Me A Kingdom Is.” Jane Ellen McAllister passed away in 1996.
