Dr. Adelaide L. Sanford: Queen Mother of Education, Instruction, Enlightenment and Pedagogy

Next Tuesday, November 19, the Brooklyn community is invited to celebrate the 99th birthday of Dr. Adelaide Sanford — and support her ongoing efforts on behalf of the education of the children of New York City and beyond — at Borough Hall in Downtown Brooklyn.

The renowned scholar and acclaimed public speaker is a national legend. She is internationally known and respected for her more than fifty years as a champion for African-centered education for students of African descent, and as a former Vice-Chancellor of the Board of Regents in New York State from 1986 to 2007. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Dr. Sanford conducted by the late writer Maitefa Angaza for Our Time Press.

Maitefa Angaza for Our Time Press: Can you tell me what was your impetus for founding the Board of Education for People of African Ancestry?
Dr. Adelaide Sanford: When I became a (New York State) regent in 1986, it gave me a view of what was going on in education across the state and across the United States. And one of the things that struck me was that other groups had boards of education involved in advocacy for their children. Certainly, the Catholics did, certainly the Jewish people did, and the Asian people did. They had their own board, organizations that went to regents’ meetings and knew what type of decisions were being made that affected their children. They had volunteers who were looking at curriculum material. We had no media, no advocacy, Nothing – while our children were the ones who were the least identifiable as being successful. We had no one looking at curriculum, we had no one going to meetings, we had no one at the regents’ meetings. So I started to talk about the importance of having an organization that looked at what the state was doing for children of African ancestry.

And it was very, very, difficult. Most people agreed that we should do something, but they didn’t know the effect of not having any reporters there, not having any representatives or cultural organizations, or sororities or fraternities, or any group. I tried to form an organization of volunteers who would look at these issues. Everybody agreed, but nobody could do anything about it. My husband, Dr. Jay Sanford, said, “Why don’t you try and see if you can pull some people together?” And that’s what I did.

That first founding board, in the criteria was – and this was a criteria that I developed out of my own thinking – that irrespective of what you did for a living, what has been your commitment to people of African ancestry on a voluntary basis, knowing the love of our people, knowing the value? What kinds of groups have you organized? There were five people who became the founding members because they did have some history of working for our people, not on a salary basis, but on a voluntary basis. And I didn’t look for people who had money; I looked for people who understood the importance of contributing to our people, by learning their past and building on today, so that there could be a future.

And as we began to meet, I brought materials about the Board of Regents, what they did, how curriculum was developed, how the textbook industry contributed to it, how the pejorative labels of “disadvantaged,” “culturally-deprived,” “at-risk,” – all of those things were weapons. If you look at what Carter G. Woodson had told us: that if you wanted to determine a person’s behavior, you have to determine what they think about themselves. Think of the importance of that statement.

So that was the beginning of that board, and we would meet in churches and there was always a time when we could meet, and a time that we had to leave. We didn’t really have cultural organizations that said, ‘Oh yes, you can meet here.’ It was my husband who said, “You need a place of your own, where you can come early, stay late, draw up your own agenda and stand on your own terms.” That began the search for a site and that, of course, bloomed into the John Henrik Clarke House. That board began to gather people in 1988 and in 1990 the board was established as a 501c3. And in 1992 we went into the building that is Clarke House. And of course, it’s still there and functioning.