Sarah J. Garnet
The First Black Female Principal of a New York City Public School
Portrait of Sarah J. Garnet from her obituary printed in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on October 30, 1911. It superimposes a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge, ca. 1890.
Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet was the first black female principal in the New York public school system. She also co-founded and led the Equal Suffrage League in Brooklyn sometime in the late 1880s, which was the first-ever suffrage club for black women, preceding the Alpha Suffrage Club founded by Ida B. Wells. The Equal Suffrage League was a small organization of well-to-do black women who first met in Sarah’s home and the seamstress shop she owned on what is now Dekalb Avenue, and then at the Carlton Avenue YMCA in Fort Greene as the club became popular. Black suffragists of the day advocated not only for women’s voting rights but also for justice and equality for the entire community of black people. To them, voting was an integral component in the fight for civil rights, proper education, economic freedom, and racial impartiality.
Sarah was born Sarah Jane Smith in Brooklyn on July 31, 1831. Her parents were Sylvanus and Ann Smith, prosperous farmers who owned land in Queens County, which, at that time, was part of Long Island. Sarah was the first of 11 children, all of whom eventually received a good education. Sarah’s primary lessons were lovingly taught by her first teacher, her grandmother Sylvia Hobbs. Her father Sylvanus was a founder of Weeksville, an early all-black community in Brooklyn where Sarah was raised. Sylvanus was also one of the few black men with the right to vote since he paid a $250 property requirement that came with the privilege. This qualification was removed for white men in 1820, thus making the act a racial injustice. Weeksville and other black settlements in Brooklyn were established to circumvent the discrimination and allow coveted voting rights to extend to blacks who held land.
Engraving of the African Free School No. 2, created from an illustration by 18-year-old student P. Reason. In the public domain.
At fourteen years of age, Sarah joined the American workforce as a teacher’s assistant at a salary of $20 per year. She continued with her studies by attending several normal schools (institutes that trained future teachers) in Queens County. In 1854 she became a teacher at the segregated African Free School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The school was started by members of the New York Manumission Society that included John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. Sarah’s hard work and dedication to pedagogy was recognized and, on April 30, 1863, she was named the first black principal in the New York public school system. She became the principal of Grammar School Number 4 and Public School Number 80, which she oversaw until her retirement in 1900, 55 years after she began her teaching career.
Portrait of Rev. Henry Highland Garnet taken by George Rockwood in New York City.
Sarah married twice, first in the 1850s, and again in the late 1870s. She married an Episcopal minister named James Thompson at a Brooklyn church. After he died sometime in the 1860s, she remained a lifelong Episcopalian. She kept the name Thompson, but some sources record her married name as Tompkins. Around 1879, Sarah then married a Presbyterian minister and abolitionist named Henry Highland Garnet. His death in 1882 left Sarah a widow until she died in 1911.
Before retiring, Sarah co-founded the Equal Suffrage League with her famous younger sister, Susan Maria Smith McKinney Steward, the first black female physician in New York State and the third in the country. Sarah was also named superintendent of the Suffrage Department of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), which later absorbed her suffrage club. Although she enjoyed a lasting career as an educator and administrator, Sarah J. Garnet was overshadowed by her sister Susan McKinley Steward in both life and death. Both were buried in the historic Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, yet Sarah’s gray headstone, small and unassuming, sits in the shadow of Susan’s grand tombstone, which is inscribed with the title “doctor,” and marked with an engraved fleur-de-lis (French for “lily flower”).
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This article appears in 45 People, Places, and Events in Black History You Should Know.
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