In 1938 Ruby Middleton Forsythe started teaching in a one-room country schoolhouse in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina. The only educational facility open to local African-American young people at the time, the simple one-room schoolhouse was all they had, and it was Ruby’s job was to teach all of the students, of all ages — all at once!
Born on June 27, 1905, Ruby Middleton earned her education certificate from the Avery Institute, and began her teaching career in Mount Pleasant. After she married the Reverend William Essex Forsythe, they moved to Pawley’s Island, where Ruby went on to devote the next five decades of her life to education and equal rights.
“Miss Ruby,” as she would come to be known to her beloved students, was an inspiring teacher. From the days of the New Deal, from a time before the Second World War, from a time of intense racial discrimination all the way up through a period of great changes, new developments, and enduring challenges, Miss Ruby helped raise up one generation after another. Together, they would see many of these great changes take place, and her students would participate in many of the new developments, including the Civil Rights Movement. Together, they would face the enduring challenges, including the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, in the form of a years-long campaign of racial harassment which targeted Miss Ruby, her school, and the African-American young people who attended it.
In addition to being an inspiring teacher, Miss Ruby would go on to become an inspiring community leader, and touch countless lives. She was one of the subjects of the book I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America, a collection of interviews and photographs published after Miss Ruby died on May 29, 1992. In honor of Miss Ruby, my father created and donated a memorial portrait in 1995.
