Grace A. Mapps (c. 1835 – June 11, 1897)[1] was an American educator, administrator and poet,[2] who may have been the first African-American woman to graduate with a four-year college degree.
[5] Her parents became Quakers in 1799, and were respected within the Society of Friends, welcoming visitors to their home including noted anti-slavery editor Charles Osborn, and British minister Thomas Shillitoe.
[5] The family were known for their hospitality, and mentioned elsewhere as being "noted for [their] acquirements in music, literature and art",[6] though many black Americans were not received warmly as members of the Society of Friends.
"[7] Samuel Ringgold Ward, an African-American abolitionist, wrote of the Society of Friends that:They will aid in giving us a partial education - but never in a Quaker school, beside their own children.
[8]In this recollection, the Mapps family are referred to as "the only colored members" at the annual meeting, and African-American Quakers are noted as a rarity.
[9] As such, Mary Jane Patterson, who graduated from Oberlin College in 1862, is widely thought to be the first black woman in the United States to earn a bachelor's degree.
After graduating from McGrawville, Mapps became a teacher at the Quaker-sponsored school for African Americans, the Institute for Colored Youth,[2] which opened on Lombard Street, Philadelphia in 1852.
In 1853 she was principal of the Girls' Department of the Friends' high school, "The Institute for Coloured Youth," where she remained until 1864, when she resigned to take care of her mother, who lived in Burlington, New Jersey.
[15] The two are also described by Eric Gardner as having been instrumental in helping to "make the institute into the flowering center of Philadelphia's free black community" and in encouraging "parents to become more active in their children's education".
[1] Jessie Carney Smith has written that:As the first black woman to earn a college degree, a respected teacher and a leader in education, and a poet who contributed to the leading African American journals of her day, Grace A. Mapps won the regard and admiration of her peers.