Location: NC 43 (East Grand Avenue) at Holly Street in Rocky Mount
County: Edgecombe
Original Date Cast: 2010
Miss Anna Easter Brown left her native West Orange, New Jersey, to pursue her education at Howard University and Columbia University. Trained for the classroom, she took up her first teaching job at Brick School, near the Virginia border in Edgecombe County. While there she wrote for Opportunity, a magazine of the National Urban League. In 1926 she left to teach in nearby Rocky Mount, first at Lincoln High School, and soon thereafter, and until 1952, at Booker T. Washington High School. She taught social sciences and Latin but took the greatest interest in teaching her students Negro history, planning an annual exhibit on the topic. In the community she was among the founders of the YWCA and a stalwart in the Episcopal church.
While at Howard, Miss Brown was among eight seniors in 1908 who joined graduate Ethel Hedgeman Lyle to found Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA), the first Greek-letter sorority for African American women. Brown was the first treasurer. Known for their colors, apple green and salmon pink, the sorority today maintains 403 undergraduate and 556 graduate or international chapters. Their main purpose over the years, in Miss Brown’s words, was to “lift the status of Negro womanhood.” Anna Easter Brown died on March 6, 1957, and is buried in Unity Cemetery. A wall exhibit at the YWCA honors her as does a graveside bench placed in 2008 by AKA.
Summing up her life, Miss Brown wrote, “I am not a career woman, but what greater career could one wish there to be as inspiration to her pupils? I have accomplished no great thing but I am steadily working toward a high moral standard and refined womanhood.” A former student, R. Kelly Bryant Jr. of Durham, recalls her dedication to teaching black history and how she inspired him toward the same endeavor.
References:
Marjorie H. Parker, History of Alpha Kappa Alpha, 1908-1999 (1999)
Earnestine McNealey, Pearls of Service: Legacy of America’s First Black Sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha (2006)
Ivy Leaf, March 1948 and Summer 1986
Rocky Mount Telegram, June 1, 1952, and March 10, 1957
Alpha Kappa Alpha website: https://www.aka1908.com