Sarah Jane Woodson Early, born Sarah Jane Woodson (November 15, 1825 – August 1907), was an American educator, black nationalist, temperance activist and author. A graduate of Oberlin College, majoring in classics, she was hired at Wilberforce University in 1858 as the first black woman college instructor and the first black American to teach at a historically black college or university (HBCU).She was not, however, the first black person to teach at the college level. Three black American men taught at Central New York College prior to the Civil War, including George B. Vashon, a graduate of Oberlin College. The school was established by Gerit Smith and went out of operation just before the Civil War began. Wilberforce University, where Woodson taught continues in operation (as of 2018). Benjamin Quarles, Black Abolitionists, New York/London: Oxford University Press, 1969.
She also taught for many years in community schools. After marrying in 1868 and moving to Tennessee with her minister husband, Jordan Winston Early, she was the principal of schools in four cities. Early served as national superintendent (1888–1892) of the black division of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), and gave more than 100 lectures across five states. She wrote a biography of her husband and his rise from slavery, that is included among post-Civil War slave narratives.
Early life and education Sarah Jane Woodson, the fifth daughter and youngest child of eleven of Jemima (Riddle) and Thomas Woodson (1790–1879), was born free in Chillicothe, Ohio, on November 15, 1825. Her parents had moved to the free state of Ohio in 1820 after her father purchased the whole family's freedom for $900 (~$ in ).Lawson did report that S. J. Woodson's father bought his family's freedom. Lawson did have a source for the information. The source was mistaken. No evidence of such a purchase exists. S. J. Woodson's father gained his freedom when he left Monticello as a teenager. S. J. Woodson's mother, Jemima, gained her freedom by arriving in Greenbrier County, joining her mother. The freedom of neither parent was purchased, nor were they formally manumitted, though Jemima's mother, a mulatto named Hannah, was formally manumitted in Greenbrier County. Thomas Woodson was an octoroon and a white man by Virginia law. White people did not enslave people, who looked as white as them, so his skin color guaranteed his freedom. Thomas Woodson married Jemima, who was brown in color. They lived together as 'free coloreds.' They left Greenbrier County, Virginia, where the Woodsons were one of only two free black families in the county.
They founded the first black Methodist church west of the Alleghenies. In 1830, the Woodsons were among the founders of a separate black farming community called Berlin Crossroads. The nearly two dozen families living there by 1840 established their own school, stores and churches. Her father and some brothers became black nationalists, which influenced Sarah Woodson's political views as an adult. Additionally, Berlin Crossroads was a prominent spot on the Underground Railroad, with the Woodsons opening their home to many runaway slaves.
Woodson's father believed he was the oldest son of Sally Hemings and President Thomas Jefferson; this tradition became part of the family's oral history.Woodson, Byron W., A President in the Family, Praeger, 2001, p. 86. Over two hundred years after newspaper reports appeared in Virginia newspapers indicating the existence of Sally Hemings' son named Tom, allegedly the son of Thomas Jefferson, professional historians such as Annette Gordon-Reed have ignored the existence of some of the newspaper reports and critically important content of the ones that they have acknowledged. Gordon-Reed and others are "hiding the balls", a practice that Gordon-Reed criticized other historians for doing in her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. According to professional historians, this was not supported by known historical evidence. A 1998 report indicated that DNA test samples from the descendants of the Jefferson, Hemings and Woodson male lines showed conclusively no match between the Jefferson and Woodson lines; the Woodson male line did show western European paternal ancestry. The Woodson family rejected the DNA report on ethical grounds because Dr. Foster had lost control of his established testing project, violated promises he had made to DNA donors, and did not know if the report reflected the actual results. To Foster's surprise, individuals he did not know took control of the public announcement of the DNA report when he thought it was still a secret. Byron Woodson, A President in the Family, (Westport CT, Praeger, 2001), 221-235. Byron Woodson was one of the DNA donors. He is a first-hand witness. Dr Foster, the testing organizer, promised the DNA donors that historians would be kept away from the DNA process. Historians had never handled the history honestly. The testing and laboratory work may have been perfect, but the reporting was hijacked by historian Joseph Ellis and others. Dr. Foster was distraught when he learned that he had lost control. After Woodson learned that things had gone astray, Foster answered Woodson's pointed questions honestly and never failed to answer the telephone. Foster did not know Ellis. When Ellis and news outlets, like U. S. News and World Report were preparing a media dump, Foster thought the DNA results were still secret. Ellis appeared as the star of a massive multi-media media dump, reporting the reputed DNA results Nov. 1st and 2nd 1998. Ellis appeared on PBS News Hour Nov. 2, 1998, announcing "...the scientific evidence that we have now generated." Again, DNA donors had been promised that historians would be kept away from the process, knowing of their untrustworthy track record. Foster sent out letters objecting to Nature's handling of matter to the New York Times and to Nature (magazine). The letters were published and the Washington Post reported (1/6/99) that Foster had issued written objections. Foster told Woodson, "I don't know," when his project was breached, thus Foster did not know if the Nature article reported the actual results or not. ---- Switching to another approach, the movie Sally Hemings was broadcast in the year 2000. Twenty million people simultaneously watched the movie on CBS. The producer acquired "the rights" to Brodie's book so as to "own the underlying material." (Andrews, Sally Hemings, 55) CBS executives, the production company executives and the screenwriter are intelligent, accomplished people and they decided to take on Brodie's evidence rather than the hijacked DNA report. Why did they make that choice? Avoiding a 4,000-word answer -- because they are grown-ups. They decided to not join the historians, like Annette Gordon-Reed in throwing the historic record under the bus. The story changes too much, when Tom and Callender are ripped out of the story. They wanted the movie to make sense. Lastly, there was a track record of ill will between CBS and historians, as in prior decades historians had prevented the movie's production. According to historians at Monticello, no documents support the claim that Woodson was Hemings's first child, as he appeared to have been born before any known child of hers. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed failed to report in her Pulitzer-Prize winning book that newsman James Callender named "Tom" as the son of Jefferson and Hemings in his Sept. 1, 1802, article and that Thomas Gibbons wrote a letter which corroborated Callender's account. The Gibbons letter rises to the level of distinct and independent evidence because it gives some information that Callender did not provide. Pulitzer-prize winners Dumas Malone and Joseph Ellis also wrote errant histories in this space. Fawn Brodie was a legitimate scholar who recovered quantities of evidence. Malone and Gordon-Reed castigated Brodie without providing a rationale. Malone, Ellis, and Gordon-Reed failed to connect with the concept of corroboration. Thomas Woodson was born in 1790, and this time also matches the year of birth for the son named Tom attributed to Sally Hemings by James Callender."Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: A Brief Account", Plantation & Slavery, Monticello, Quote: "The DNA study found no link between the descendants of Field Jefferson [tested because Thomas Jefferson had no direct male descendants] and Thomas C. Woodson... But there is no indication in Jefferson's records of a child born to Hemings before 1795, and there are no known documents to support that Thomas Woodson was Hemings' first child.", accessed 6 March 2011. Woodson, A President in the Family, 215–17.
Sarah Jane Woodson was born in Chillicothe, Ross County, Ohio, but was raised on her parents' farm in Jackson County, Ohio. Thomas Woodson expanded the farm to . Abolitionist newspapers in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh reported on the size and prosperity of the farm. He owned 400 heads of cattle, 150 hogs, and "fine horses."Minnie S. Woodson, Woodson Source Book, (Washington D.C. self-published, 1978), p. 32. (LOC 1984).
Woodson reportedly showed an interest in education at an early age, memorizing every hymn her family sang at age three and lengthy passages of the Bible at the age of five.Monroe Alphus Majors, 1864–1960; in Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities(Jackson, TN: M.V. Lynk Publishing House, 1893), 102-103 In 1839, Sarah Woodson joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), founded in 1816 as the first independent black denomination in the United States. Her brothers, Lewis, Thomas, and John, were ministers in the church. The Woodson family emphasized education for all their children. Sarah Jane and her older sister Hannah enrolled in Oberlin College in 1852. Oberlin gained financial support from wealthy abolitionists a year after it was founded. The school made an effort to attract black American students. A few years later, Oberlin admitted women, becoming the first co-educational college in the nation. The Oberlin community was a nucleus for the Second Great Awakening. Sarah Jane completed the collegiate program, with a degree in Classical Studies, while Hannah enrolled in the preparatory program and left after about a year. Sarah graduated in 1856, among the first African American women college graduates. Oberlin was one of the schools recommended by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church.
Career In 1849/50, abolitionists took control of the politics and government in Ohio. In 1856, Salmon Chase was elected governor. Schools for black Ohioan children were established in Southern Ohio. In the decade before the Civil War, no other state supported black students' education as robustly as Ohio. Before and after graduation from Oberlin, Woodson taught in black 'common schools' in towns such as Circleville and Zanesville for a few years.