Maria Louise Baldwin

Maria Louise Baldwin (September 13, 1856 – January 9, 1922) was an African-American educator and civic leader born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After teaching for a time in Maryland, she returned to Cambridge to teach at the Agassiz Grammar School. In 1889 she became principal, the first African-American female principal in Massachusetts and the Northeast. She became master of the school when it was expanded through high school grades and held that position for 40 years, establishing the Agassiz School as one of the best in the city. She was involved in black intellectual and progressive circles. During the summers, Baldwin taught teachers in other regions and also lectured publicly.

Baldwin was born to Peter L. and Mary E. Baldwin in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received all of her education in the city's public schools. In 1874, Baldwin graduated from Cambridge High School, and a year later she graduated from the Cambridge normal training school for teachers.

Baldwin first taught in Chestertown, Maryland, for two years. In 1881, she was hired as primary-grade teacher at the Agassiz Grammar School of Cambridge. In 1889, she was promoted to principal of the school, making her the first African-American female principal in Massachusetts and the Northeast. As principal, Baldwin supervised white faculty and a predominantly white student body. In 1916, as a new Agassiz school was erected to include higher grades, Baldwin was made master, supervising twelve teachers and 500 students, all whites. She was one of only two women in the Cambridge school system who held the position of master and the only African American in New England to hold such a position.

Baldwin served as master of Agassiz school for forty years. Under her leadership, it became one of the best schools in the city, attended by children of Harvard professors and many of the old Cambridge families. She introduced new methods of teaching mathematics and began art classes. She was the first to introduce the practice of hiring a school nurse. Her school was the only one in the city of Cambridge to establish an “open-air” classroom. Poet E. E. Cummings was one of her students and described her thus in his book Six Nonlectures:

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