Garnet Crummell Wilkinson (January 10, 1879 – June 15, 1969)[1][2] was an American educator best known for running the African-American public school system in Washington, DC during segregation.
[6] The family relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1888, first settling in the Barry Farm neighborhood, where Wilkinson attended Birney Elementary School.
His family then moved to LeDroit Park, in Washington's Northwest quadrant where activist Mary Church Terrell and, subsequently, NAACP attorney Charles Hamilton Houston.
After graduating with his undergraduate degree, he returned to Washington as a Latin and economics instructor at the M Street School, teaching there for the next ten years.
[5] In 1905, Wilkinson married Philadelphia native and fellow educator, Blanche E. Colder, who previously graduated from Miner Normal School.
[5] Wilkinson lived in the LeDroit Park section of Washington, DC and was an honorary member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity.
[1] During his tenure as assistant superintendent, Wilkinson was both beloved by those who regarded him as a visionary in the area of black education and condemned by those who accused him of being a "staunch defender of the status quo."
He enhanced the nursing program at Margaret Murray Washington High School, which trained African American girls to help meet the needs of black residents whose medical was limited to segregated hospitals.
[5] Wilkinson was also a proponent of "separate, but equal" education because he believed that it benefitted African American residents in Washington especially.
Later, Additionally, he supported a school board ban on the NAACP's publication The Crisis and the Urban League's Opportunity Magazine.