Building to Be Renamed for Pioneer Black Educator Anne Marie Becraft

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April 13, 2017 – The 19th-century free woman of color for whom Georgetown’s Anne Marie Becraft Hall will be named April 18 founded one of the first schools for black girls in Georgetown and later became one of America’s first black nuns.
“I’m thrilled that we decided to rename one of our buildings after Anne Marie Becraft,” says Marcia Chatelain, associate professor of history and African American studies and a member of the Georgetown University Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation. “She was a devout Catholic and deeply committed to educating young girls of color in the nation’s capital. Though she experienced both anti-Catholic and anti-black intimidation, she nevertheless responded to her calling to teach and to serve God.”
Becraft began her teaching career at age 15 in 1820, founding a school on Dumbarton Street in Washington, D.C. Her intelligence and work ethic attracted the notice of Rev. John Van Lommel, S.J., from Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown.
'Elevation of Character'
Van Lommel was so impressed with Becraft’s work and “elevation of character,” that in 1827 he “took it in hand to give her a higher style of school in which to work for her sex and race, to the education of which she had now fully consecrated herself,” according to The History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880, published in 1885 by African American historian George Washington Williams.
The new school on Fayette Street, which included 30 to 35 students, was across from the Monastery of the Visitation, established in 1799 by Rev. Leonard Neale, S.J., president of Georgetown from 1798 to 1806.
Williams called Becraft “the most remarkable Colored young woman of her time in the District and perhaps of any time.”
In 1831, she left her school in the hands of a promising student and moved to Baltimore to join the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first African American female ...

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