Education advocate Sarah Stevenson dies at age 97

PHOTO | TROY HULL

Sarah Stevenson, an education advocate who became the first Black woman elected to public office in Mecklenburg County was she won a seat on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board, died Sept. 26 at age 97. Mrs. Stevenson was also co-founder of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum.

Sarah Stevenson, an education advocate and a force in Charlotte’s social and political circles, died Sept. 25 at age 97.

A native of Heath Springs, South Carolina, Mrs. Stevenson was a major figure in the city’s social, education and political fabric since the 1950s. She was the first Black person elected president of Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s desegregated PTA Council in 1970 and the first Black woman elected to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board in 1980, where she served two terms. She was co-founder of the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, a weekly gathering of neighbors, advocates and elected officials for in-person conversations. 

“I want to say letest thou servant depart in peace,” Stevenson joked at a gala celebrating her 90th birthday in 2015, “but I’ve got to say Lord, I know there’s some more stuff you want me to do, and I want to do it.”

Mrs. Stevenson also lobbied for new investment and revitalization in Historic West End, which includes the Beatties Ford Road corridor.

“Sarah Stevenson is the personal commitment and conscience of this city,” Johnson C. Smith University President Ronald Carter said in 2017. “She continues to argue, demand, frustrate, upset anyone who believes that the Northwest Corridor does not deserve sustainable assets. She will challenge those who are intellectually dishonest, who will speak eloquently but do very little when it comes time to demonstrate their commitment to the Northwest Corridor.”

Carter credited Stevenson with leading Historic West End revitalization through development of infrastructure and commerce in the neighborhood.

Mrs. Stephenson was featured in Stephana Colbert’s “Ordinary Extraordinary African American Women: The Elders” a book published in 2017 that included narratives celebrating Black women over age 70 who overcame sexism, racism and other adversity to lead extraordinary lives.

“Sarah Stevenson is a jewel in this community,” AME Zion Bishop George Battle, a former school board member said upon the book’s publication. “I am so glad we gave her flowers while she can still smell them.”

Appalled by the poor condition of textbooks and uniforms in her children’s segregated schools in the ‘50s, Mrs. Stevenson organized a fundraising drive to buy new band uniforms. That led to work with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Youth Council and Community Relations Committee and a prominent role in the 1960s when she led the all-Black PTA council’s merger with its all-white counterpart to become president of the desegregated Charlotte-Mecklenburg PTSA Council in 1970.

In 1974, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools appointed Mrs. Stevenson to the pupil reassignment committee, which implemented desegregation across the district. In 1980, Mrs. Stevenson’s election to the school board was the first by a Black woman for any office in Mecklenburg County. That same year, as a member of the Black Political Caucus, she helped launch the Tuesday Morning Breakfast Forum, where she remained active into her 90s.

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