Selena Sloan Butler

Selena Sloan Butler (1872–1964) was the founder and first president of the National Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers Association (NCCPT).

At the age of sixteen Butler graduated from Spelman in 1888 (with a high school diploma) and began her teaching career in Atlanta.

[1] She married Henry Rutherford Butler, a prominent African American doctor in Atlanta who had studied medicine at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[3] When Henry entered the Yonge Street Elementary School, Selena began seeking ways to help parents get involved in their children's education.

She wrote several letters encouraging parents and teachers of color to form a union with the primary purpose of uniting home and school into a planned program for child welfare.

Between 1929 and 1930, she served on the president's Committee (presently, the White House Conference on Children and Youth) and would go on to lead the NCCPT for more than thirty years.

She co-founded the Spelman College Alumnae Association, organized the Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the Atlanta YWCA, and was the first president of the Georgia Federation of Colored Women's Club.

Thereafter, she returned to the United States to live with her son and his wife in Arizona where she organized the first black women's chapter of the Gray Ladies Corps.