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Jun 9, 2008 2:02 pm US/Central
Texas Educator Hazel Harvey Peace Dead At 100
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 News) ―
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Peace with Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief during her 100th birthday celebration.
KTVT / KTXA
A noted Fort Worth educator and advocate of children's literacy has died. Hazel Harvey Peace passed away Sunday evening.
Peace graduated from the Fort Worth Colored School, I.M. Terrell High. She went on to receive a B.A. in education from Howard University, an M.A. from Columbia University, do postgraduate work at the University of Wisconsin and professional study at Vassar College.
Peace returned to Fort Worth and spent 46 years at her high school alma mater. In the decades spent at I.M. Terrell, Peace held the positions of teacher, debate team coach, counselor, dean of girls and vice principal. After retiring Peace became dean of women at Bishop College in Dallas.
Monday the Fort Worth Independent School District issued a news release that said in part, "Her tenure touched thousands of students and successive generations. Her influence is at work today in the lives of former students in Fort Worth, in other states and around the world."
It was announced later in the day that the District "will recommend naming a new school for the veteran educator".
Peace grew up during the Jim Crow era and as a child had little, if any, access to public libraries. "African-Americans couldn't linger among the bookshelves of a public library or read quietly in a corner," Peace once explained during an interview. "They could check out a book and leave."
In 2000, the Fort Worth Central Library named a youth center in honor of Peace. The Hazel Harvey Peace Youth Center has a number of reading, video and tutorial services for children up to 14 years of age.
Upon hearing of her passing Fort Worth May Mike Moncrief said, "Ms. Peace—as everyone called her out of respect—was an inspiration. She was an advocate for all things good. She was, without a doubt, one of the most influential women in our city's history. Ms. Peace leaves behind a wake of young lives positively touched, moved or impacted by her example."
In 2004, The University of North Texas School of Library and Information Sciences created the Hazel Harvey Peace Professorship. The $350,000 professorship is the first at a four-year state-funded institution in Texas to be named for an African American woman.
Not only was peace a life-long educator, but she dedicated years of service fighting for social justice and advocacy for the homeless. When asked how she accomplished so much, Peace often offered the advice, "Start early and quit late."
In August of 2007 Peace turned 100 years old and the City of Fort Worth issued a Congratulatory Resolution that said in part,"…the Commissioners Court of Tarrant County, do hereby congratulate Mrs. Hazel Harvey Peace on her 100th birthday and urge the citizens of Tarrant County to continue her work to create opportunities for children to succeed."
Hazel Harvey Peace would have been 101 years old on August 4, 2008.
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