Sarah Jane Woodson Early - Career

Career

After graduation, she taught in black community schools in Ohio for several years. In 1863 she gave "Address to Youth," to the Ohio Colored Teachers Association, one of a number of speeches she gave following the Emancipation Proclamation to urge African-American youth to join the "political and social revolutions." She encouraged them to follow careers in education and the sciences to lead their race.

When hired in 1858 at Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Woodson became the first African-American woman college instructor. Her brother Rev. Lewis Woodson was a trustee and founder of the college. It had been established in 1855 to educate black youth, as a collaboration between the white and black leaders of the Cincinnati Methodist conference and the AME Church in Ohio, respectively. Sarah's brother Lewis Woodson was among the original 24 founding trustees. Wilberforce closed for two years during the Civil War because of finances. It lost most of its nearly 200 subscription students at the beginning of the war, as they were mostly mixed-race children of wealthy planters from the South, who withdrew them at that time. During the war, the Cincinnati Methodist Conference could not offer its previous level of financial support, as it was called to care for soldiers and families.

The AME Church purchased the college and reopened it; this was the first African-American owned and operated college. Sarah Jane Woodson taught English and Latin. She also served as Lady Principal and Matron.

After the Civil War in 1868, Woodson began teaching in a new school for black girls established by the Freedmen's Bureau in Hillsboro, North Carolina.