English: Biography: Abna Aggrey Lancaster taught English and world literature for more than 40 years in public high schools and at Livingstone College in North Carolina. She had "a sense of joy in seeing young people develop." Both parents were teachers; her father taught at Livingstone College. Until she reached fifth grade, Abna Aggrey was taught by her mother, who did not work outside the home until after her husband's death. Miss Aggrey attended the high school department of Livingstone, then Shaw College. After teaching for one year in Winston-Salem, she returned to Salisbury, where she married Spencer Lancaster, also a teacher. They both taught at Price High School in Salisbury for more than 20 years. Mrs. Lancaster then spent 14 years as a teacher at Livingstone, where her concern for the students, and especially the foreign students, led them to call her "Mother." While at Livingstone, she also chaired the admissions committee, was faculty representative to the board of trustees, corresponding secretary of Poets and Dreamers Garden Association, and secretary of the English department. She retired in 1977. Mrs. Lancaster was appointed by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church as a delegate to the World Council of Churches meeting in Nairobi in 1975; she was also a charter member of the board of directors of the Salisbury Symphony and a member of the Business and Professional Women's Club.

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

Questions? http://asklib.schlesinger.radcliffe.edu/index.php