Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Gertrude Wade of Homewood holds a picture taken in 1944 of her graduation from the University of Pittsburgh. She was the first female African-American principal in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

By Ervin Dyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In 1944, Gertrude Johnson Wade took the No. 82 street car from her home in East Liberty into the Hill District.

She wore sensible heels, crisp suits and carried her lessons in a canvas book bag. She was headed to A. Leo Weil Elementary School and into history, eventually becoming the first black woman to be a principal in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

		Black History Month: Stories of Homewood Since the 1940s, Homewood has been a major hub of black life in Pittsburgh. Though the Hill District has been recognized for its vibrant entertainment past, its famous sons and daughters, and its role in the city's development, Homewood is often forgotten or dismissed. It has its own rich heritage, though, and has been integral in the history of the African-American community in Pittsburgh. During Black History Month, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is visiting and writing about some of the people, events and places that make up Homewood's history. 2007 Black History Month Guide

Mrs. Wade, one of a small cadre of black teachers in Pittsburgh, was in an even rarer field: she was one of the few blacks to teach academics. She taught second-grade at Weil Elementary at a time when most blacks were hired as music teachers or gym instructors.

In Pittsburgh 63 years ago, the NAACP and the Urban League were agitating for the Pittsburgh schools to hire more African-American teachers.

Mrs. Wade, who in January 1944 had graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a degree in elementary education, would walk graciously through the doors they opened. When she interviewed with the board of education, she was told to go South. They hire Negro teachers there.

"I wanted to stay here," she said. "All of my [white] classmates were being hired and I was a little P'O-ed that I couldn't get a job."

A short while later, she was on the bus when a social worker friend told her to try Weil. After interviewing with the principal, she worked as a substitute for three months and then was hired to teach second grade.

"I felt I had achieved something," said Mrs. Wade. When she started she was one of four black teachers at the school and earned a salary of about $140 a month, taking home about $99 after taxes. She had a class of 40 students.

She taught primarily African-American youth who came from the newly built Hill District housing projects. In her low, lilting voice she told them "to do their best."

Mrs. Wade taught 16 years at Weil, doing the best she could and grooming both black and white student teachers from Chatham College, Pitt and Duquesne University.

When she started at Weil, Mrs. Wade returned to night school at Pitt, studying education administration and earning a master's degree in 1946.

All the classes were full of white men, she said, describing life at Pitt as largely segregated, and adding that many professors were dismissive of black students.

"Nevertheless, I hung in there and did my thing."

Her tenacity paid off.

By 1961, with Weil enrollment pushing toward 1,400 students, Mrs. Wade was named an assistant principal.

A year later, she was called to the school board and was told she would be the principal at Vann Elementary, another Hill school not far from Weil. Vann had 850 students in kindergarten to sixth grade.

Her historic appointment was heralded in the Pittsburgh Courier, and resonated briefly throughout the community.

Despite remaining a principal for 21 years, Mrs. Wade's story has been mostly lost. Her achievement was perhaps eclipsed by another trailblazer, Helen Faison, who six years after Mrs. Wade's appointment became the first black female to principal a high school and who went on to serve as the schools' first black superintendent, although on an interim basis.

Mrs. Wade speaks softly about her accomplishments in the Homewood home she's lived in for 59 years.

Surrounded by her doll collection, she gently smiles as she shows off a yellowed copy of the Pittsburgh Courier news article that exclaimed her achievement all those years ago.

A bright student all of her life, she dreamed of being a doctor. Her parents, Edward and Laura Belle Johnson, could not afford that tuition, so she studied education instead. With tuition $150 a semester, her parents paid her way each term by taking a loan out against their furniture.

"I respected my parents and wanted to please them," she said.

When Mrs. Wade was 25, she moved -- with her parents -- into a brick home and from their wide front porch she looked out over a striving middle-class Homewood.

Growing up, the Johnsons sent their daughter to piano lessons. She studied under Mary Caldwell Dawson, the diva who founded the National Negro Opera Company.

They sent her to Bethesda Presbyterian Church, a beacon of social outreach, where she was in Campfire Girls and studied Bible verses.

Both lived with their daughter until their deaths.

Mrs. Wade wasn't the first black principal in Pittsburgh. There was John Brewer, appointed at Miller Elementary in 1955. But Mrs. Wade was the first black female in the echelons of educational leadership, and it was lonely at the top.

Mrs. Wade's appointment to Vann came a year before the March on Washington, and at a time that other blacks her age were getting on buses and riding south to fight for voting rights or walking protest lines seeking job opportunity.

Mrs. Wade and cousin Rachel Poole joined the Congress of Racial Equality and used nonviolent civil disobedience to integrate Pittsburgh area movie theaters and restaurants.

"It was dangerous in this city," said Ms. Poole. "Those were frightening times. I was hurt."

Mrs. Wade went with her cousin, but it was more her metier to work quietly behind the scenes doing the painstaking tasks of finding scholarships and getting students the extra help to be ready for fuller participation in society.

Mrs. Wade put her focus on the teachers and the students.

"What she did was probably more lasting than some of that street stuff," said Ms. Poole, who also broke barriers by becoming the first black woman to direct nursing at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

At Vann, there were six black teachers. The others were white.

In her new position, there were harassing phone calls to the school and ugly letters written to her. She endured them alone.

Mrs. Wade helped build a federal team teaching program for disadvantaged students.

After five years at Vann, Mrs. Wade was sent to the troubled Larimer Elementary. She stayed there two years before being recruited as principal of East Hills Elementary School, a magnet program that was voluntarily integrated and innovative for its open classrooms.

She recalled the day she was asked to take the helm of the school.

The superintendent pulled up in a chauffeured car at her home. A stylish woman concerned about decorum, she fretted because he was visiting while the curtains were being cleaned and the windows were bare.

She retired in 1981 to care for her aging father.

"My aunt blazed a trail that was significant," said Tenache Golden, "but hardly anyone remembers what she did. She never extolled herself."

When she was first hired as teacher, Mrs. Wade set about on a mission:

"I knew, when I was appointed, that I'd have to represent myself, black folks and women. So, I just set out to do a good job."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Feb. 6, 2007) This article as originally published Feb. 5, 2007 about Gertrude Johnson Wade, the first black female principal in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, listed an incorrect salary when she first began teaching in 1944 at A. Leo Weil Elementary School. Mrs. Wade earned $140 a month. After taxes, she brought home about $99 a month.