Emma Merritt

Emma Frances Grayson Merritt was born on January 11, 1860, in Dumfries, Virginia, one of seven children, the third of four daughters of John and Sophia (Cook) Merritt. When she was three years of age, her parents moved to Washington, D.C.

Merritt was a teacher well before she received any higher education. She taught first grade in the public schools of the District of Columbia beginning in 1875, when she was 15. She continued to teach while completing the normal school program (1883-87) at Howard University. In 1897 she was appointed an elementary school principal. She continued intermittent study of the social sciences at Columbia (later named George Washington) University until the end of the century.

Merritt established the very first kindergarten in the United States for black children in 1897. She became director of primary instruction in the District of Columbia in 1898 and a supervising principal in 1927, remaining in that role until her retirement in 1930.

At historically black universities and colleges throughout the country, Merritt was a prized lecturer in the education of young children. She was an organizer and director of the Teachers' Benefit and Annuity Association in the District of Columbia and president of the capital branch of the NAACP, among many civic responsibilities.

She died on June 8, 1933, in Washington DC.

The location of the Emma F.G. Merritt Public School is on the site of the former Suburban Gardens Amusement Park in a building constructed in 1943. According to oral history given by former teachers, while the site has changed, the philosophy of self reliance has essentially remained the same. Now called Merritt Educational Center, the school is located at 5002 Hayes Street, NE., Washington D.C.,

Sources: Deanwood, A Model of Self-Sufficiency in Far Northeast Washington, DC, Deanwood History Project; Biographical Dictionary of Modern American Educators, by Frederik Ohles, Shirley M. Ohles, and John G. Ramsay; The Voice, vol. 1, 1904