English: Biography: Olivia Pearl Stokes, an educator of exceptional versatility and an ordained Baptist minister, has served the Protestant Church and the Baptist denomination both nationally and locally in developing and administering programs in religious education. A member of a prominent family of landowners in North Carolina, she and her mother, Bessie Thomas Stokes (later Mrs. Vann), moved to New York City in 1925 after the death of her father, William Harmon Stokes. There she attended public school and was an active member of the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the YWCA in Harlem. For a time she attended Hunter College High School, an academy for gifted children, but after her stepfather's death changed the family financial situation, she transferred to Wadleigh High School in her last year, without telling her mother, and took the secretarial program. She was director of the information desk at the Harlem YWCA for six years, then in 1941 became associate director of the Baptist Educational Center in New York. During this period she also held posts with the New York State Christian Youth Council and the United Christian Youth Movement, and attended night school at City College. After transferring to New York University, she received a bachelor's degree in education in 1947 and a master's in religious education in 1948. Awarded a fellowship to Columbia University Teachers' College, in 1952 she became the first Black woman to earn a doctorate in religious education. In 1953, Dr. Stokes went to the Massachusetts Council of Churches as director of religious education, overseeing the direction and design of programs for over a million and a half Protestants in the Commonwealth. After her ordination in 1966, she worked for seven years at the National Council of Churches as associate director for urban education where she helped to design their Black Curriculum Resource Center. From 1973 to 1976 at City University of New York, she developed a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural teacher education program. She was instrumental in establishing the Greater Harlem Comprehensive Guidance Center, which she now serves as executive director. Since 1978 she has taught part-time in the School of Education at New York University and has served as an interim pastor at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Brooklyn. A worldwide traveler, she has led many study tours to Israel and West Africa and assisted in the development of a graduate teacher education program in five Nigerian universities. She is author of two children's books. In 1957, she received the Sojourner Truth Award from the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women's Clubs, and in 1976 the NCNW's Bethune Award.

Description: The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century. Photograph taken by Judith Sedwick
Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Collection: Black Women Oral History Project
Research Guide: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_bwohp

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