Rutherford Woman | Henrietta Twitty

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Henrietta Twitty (1903-1977)
A Teacher for All Seasons
by J. Lee Greene
Photo: Courtesy of Threatha Bennings

It seems that at an early age Henrietta Isabella Carpenter wanted to be a teacher. When she was born in 1903, there were strict rules governing the personal and professional lives of teachers in North Carolina and in several other states.

Two of the several rules for a female teacher were that she could not be married and she could not date. Violation of these (and most of the other) rules meant her immediate dismissal. Apparently, a married female implied certain knowledge that would undermine the morals of her students.

After World War I, the marital status rule for female teachers had been eased. Yet even after married women were allowed to be teachers, “Miss” remained the address for most of them, a custom that still survives.

By the time (or shortly after) Henrietta Carpenter began her teaching career in Rutherford County, probably in the mid-1920s, she married Theodore Twitty. From then until now, she was and still is affectionately known as “Miss Twitty,” not Mrs. Twitty.

Anyone over 55 years old who attended The Grahamtown School, Dunbar Elementary School, or Proctor Elementary School knew Henrietta Twitty and, quite likely, was a student in one of her classes. “Miss Twitty was the kind of teacher you could never forget,” says Azalee Patterson, her student from the late 1930s.

Miss Twitty usually taught 6th and 7th grades. She vigorously taught the prescribed elementary school curriculum. “Back then, some of us thought she was a ‘mean’ teacher,” says Myra Steele, her student from the 1960s. “Now we know she was very strict and very serious.”

Of her students, most readily remember her passionate interest in African American history and culture, which she incorporated into the prescribed curriculum. “She introduced her students to Negro History Week” (now known as Black History Month), recalls James Petty, one of her students from the 1960s. Yet it was not just a one-week unit of instruction; it was an instructional activity that lasted the entire school year.

When she taught arithmetic, she incorporated the life and works of African Americans such as Benjamin Banneker (1731-1806), a mathematician, astronomer, and inventor. When she taught science, she incorporated the lives and achievements of African American scientists: chemist and botanist George Washington Carver (1864-1943); biomedical scientist Ernest E. Just (1883-1941), who was a pioneer in the study of cell biology; and Charles R. Drew (1904-1950), a physician, surgeon, and medical researcher who is credited with the development of blood banks during World War II.

Miss Twitty’s students learned about the lives and works of classical European composers such as Bach and Beethoven as well as Afro-British classical composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) and Afro-Canadian composer Nathaniel Dett (1882-1943). They studied the lives and works of European painters, such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, along with the lives and works of African American painters, such as Henry O. Tanner (1859-1937) and Romare Bearden (1911-1988).

When Miss Twitty taught the works of the “school house poets” (Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, and others), she also taught poems by African Americans such as James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) and especially Paul Laurence Dunbar (1878-1906), after whom Dunbar Elementary School was named.

Her history units included Thomas Jefferson and Betsy Ross as well as African Americans Frederick Douglas (1818-1895) and Harriet Tubman (c. 1820-1913); Abraham Lincoln and Clara Barton as well as African Americans Nat Turner (1800-1831) and Sojourner Truth (1797-1883); President Harry S. Truman as well as United Nations diplomat Ralph Bunche (1904-1971), an African American who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for mediating an armistice between Arabs and Jews in Palestine.

In her classes, the study of African American history and culture culminated with the celebration of Negro History Week in February. Each student in her class was required to make a Negro history book. Boys and girls were taught how to sew by hand in order to make a cloth-back cover for their books.

Typically, the books contained the student’s hand-written essays about prominent African Americans in history as well as current newspaper and magazine clippings about prominent African Americans in politics, science, entertainment, the arts, and other fields.

During the time Miss Twitty taught, African American newspapers and magazines were not stock items on newsstands in Rutherford County. She encouraged her students to subscribe to publications such as the Baltimore Afro-American and the Norfolk Journal and Guide newspapers and Ebony and Sepia magazines.

Many of her former students recall her lessons on plant life, from which they learned not only scientific information but also practical and decorative uses of plants. For example, she taught her students to weave baskets from weeping willow branches and honeysuckle and other vines. She taught them to sew multi-colored sequins on cloth to replicate the shapes and colors of exotic butterflies and birds.

Her students made dyes from various plants and berries. They processed chinaberries to make necklaces or to decorate purses and other items. They often used the dyes and decorative items to design their black history books. “Some of her former students still have the items they made over fifty years ago,” say Threatha Bennings (her student from the 1940s), including their black history books.

“Miss Twitty was decades ahead of her time in what and how she taught,” according to Wilford Foster, her student in the 1940s. She certainly was decades ahead in incorporating the history and culture of African Americans into the standard curriculum.

Born January 12, 1903, in Rutherford County to Weldon and Laura Carpenter, Henrietta Carpenter married Theodore Twitty in the 1920s. She attended Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte and other teacher-training institutions, and she spent her professional career as a public school teacher in Rutherford County.

As a teacher and a person, Miss Twitty was an inspiration to many, many students. At least three students from her 1956-57 6th -grade class went on to earn doctorate degrees, Baxter Dewberry, Lee Greene, and Janet Sims-Wood. Greene and Sims-Wood each has published several books focused on African American history and culture. “When I look back, I can say that the seed for my professional work in African American history and culture was sown in Miss Twitty’s 6th-grade class.” This is one way retired historian and librarian Dr. Janet Sims-Wood reflects about Miss Twitty. Dr. Lee Greene, a retired university professor, echoes Sims-Wood.

Henrietta Carpenter Twitty passed on June 12, 1977. Her legacy lives and thrives in the many students she taught and inspired. In the words of James Petty, “When I think of black history [and culture], I think of Miss Twitty; when I think of Miss Twitty, I think of black history [and culture]. It’s as simple as that.”

Rutherford Woman March 2011

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