Margaret Just Butcher was an American educator and civil rights activist. Butcher worked as an English professor at Howard University and Federal City College. She also taught overseas, first as a Fulbright Visiting Professor and later as a cultural affairs attache. She also had experience teaching in Washington, D.C. public schools. Later, she would serve on the Washington, D.C. Board of Education during the time these schools were desegregating. Butcher is also known for her collaborative work with Alain Locke, The Negro in American Culture.
Early life and education
Margaret Just was born in Washington, D.C. on April 28, 1913. Her father was biologist Ernest Everett Just and her mother, Ethel Highwarden, was an educator. Butcher was provided the best schooling in the area and studied in Italy with her father in 1927. Butcher earned her Ph.D. in 1947 from Boston University.
Career
Educator
Butcher worked as a professor of English at Virginia Union during the 1935-1936 school year. She went on to teach public school in Washington, D.C. from 1937 to 1941. In 1941, she became a Rosenwald Fellow. Starting in 1942, Butcher taught at Howard University. In 1955, she left Howard. Butcher also taught at Federal City College from 1971 to 1982. In 1950 she went to Europe as a Fulbright Visiting Professor. She was the first woman to work as a visiting professor in the Fulbright program. In Europe, she taught at the University of Grenoble and the University of Lyon in France. She also worked to interview other Fulbright candidates in France. From 1960 to 1965, she taught English and American culture in Rabat and was the director of the English Language Training Institute in Casablanca. She also worked as the "cultural affairs attache to Paris" in the 1960s, heading back to Washington in 1968.
Butcher was a passionate advocate for civil rights. Butcher was named as a member of the Washington D.C. Board of Education in 1953, replacing Velma G. Williams. The Pittsburgh Courier praised her "militant" approach to fighting segregationin public schools. Butcher found discrepancies between the schools for white and black students and called out the inequity in the classrooms. From 1954 to 1955, she worked with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund as a special education consultant. After the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools was illegal, Butcher warned that there were still additional fights against discrimination facing black peoplein America. The superintendent of the Washington D.C. schools, Hobart M. Corning, favored a gradual approach to integrating the schools, which Butcher disagreed with. A white nationalist group, the NAAWP, called for her to resign from the board and called her a "'tool' of the NAACP" and considered her unable to be objective on school integration. Butcher was certainly working for the NAACP and was not silent in her criticisms of Corning's plan to delay integration in Washington schools. She discussed the plans to integrate the schools on behalf of the NAACP at the annual meeting of the Newport News branch in 1954. In 1955, Butcher continued to speak out against the gradual nature of integration, stating that the Washington schools were still largely segregated and that waiting wouldn't accomplish their goals. The New York Age called her a "constant thorn in the side of the Washington, D.C. school board." She remained on the board until 1956. The Lambda Kappa Mu sorority honored Butcher for her fight against segregation in 1954.
Butcher wrote The Negro in American Culture, finishing the work of her mentor and friend, Alain Locke. When Locke became sick, Butcher helped care for him, visiting him at home daily, preparing meals for him and taking him to the hospital herself. After Locke died, Butcher used notes that Locke left for her and finished his work. The book was published in 1956, revised and reprinted in 1971 and translated into 11 different languages.
Personal life
Butcher had a brief marriage to Stanton Wormley and the couple had a daughter, Sheryl Everett. Around 1949, she married James W. Butcher, Jr., a Howard drama professor. In 1959. she sought a divorce from her husband. Butcher's daughter, Everett, eventually went on to hold a "high science post." Butcher died on February 7, 2000.
