|
| Affiliation | Democratic |
|
| Name | Marguerite Archie-Hudson |
| Address |
Los Angeles, California , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
November 18, 1937
(86 years)
|
| Contributor | Barack O-blame-a |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Feb 02, 2017 07:53pm |
| Tags |
|
| Info | college president; educator; politician
Personal Information
Born on November 18, 1937, in Yonges Island, SC; married Hudson, 1960s (divorced)
Education: Talladega College, BA, psychology, 1958; Harvard University, MA, education and counseling, 1962; University of California at Los Angeles, PhD, higher education administration, late 1980s.
Politics: Democrat.
Memberships:
Selected: Delta Sigma Theta sorority; State Bar of California; March of Dimes, chairperson; California Museum of Science and Industry Foundation; United Way.
Career
Burke High School, Charleston, SC, counselor, 1958; Institute for Psychological Services, Illinois Institute of Technology, psychometrist, 1959-69; University of Chicago Lab School, counselor, 1962-66; Upward Bound program, Occidental College, Los Angeles, director, 1966-68; Locke High School, Los Angeles, director of college counseling, 1968-71; office of Rep. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, district staff director, 1972-78; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, staffer, 1978-79; office of CA Assemblyman Willie Brown, staffer, 1980s; California State Government, Assemblywoman from District 48, 1990-96; Talladega College, president, 1998-2001; College of Charleston, political science instructor, 2002-.
Life's Work
Any one of Marguerite Archie-Hudson's careers would be worthy of historical note. Rising from a childhood spent in rural South Carolina at the height of segregation, Archie-Hudson became a respected educational psychologist in Chicago, Illinois, serving for a time at one of the most prestigious primary schools in the United States. Moving on to California, she worked her way up in the educational world and parlayed her familiarity with school issues into an impressive political career. Archie-Hudson then became president of her alma mater, Alabama's Talladega College, and the first African-American woman to head a four-year college-level institution in Alabama history. Finally, Archie-Hudson returned to her home state of South Carolina, teaching political science and lending her expertise to several innovative research efforts.
Marguerite Archie was born on November 18, 1937, on Yonges Island along the South Carolina coastline. Raised by her grandparents, she grew up on a cotton farm with a sugar cane mill and went to classes in a two-room schoolhouse, strictly segregated by race. For two years, however, she was sent to New Jersey to live with her mother, and there she was one of only a few black students. Back in South Carolina, she was named valedictorian of her eighth-grade class. She hoped to attend high school, but the local school system didn't provide African Americans with anything beyond an eighth-grade education. To continue her education, she moved to live with her aunt in Charleston, South Carolina.
Worked in Psychology Field
Archie-Hudson excelled academically in Charleston and won a scholarship to Talladega College in Alabama, a historically black school founded just after the Civil War. She graduated with a degree in psychology in 1958 and, facing the continuing exclusion of blacks from graduate programs in the South, she went north for further study. Talladega had a strong science program that prepared Archie-Hudson well for graduate work. She earned a master's degree in education and counseling from Harvard University in 1962. While at Harvard, Archie-Hudson met and married a U.S. Marine officer named Hudson, whom she later divorced.
Archie-Hudson began working in her chosen field while she pursued her master's degree. She returned briefly to Charleston, where she worked as a high school guidance counselor. Moving to Chicago, she worked for ten years as a psychometrist, a specialist in psychological measurements, at the Illinois Institute of Technology on the city's South Side. From 1962 to 1966 she also worked as a counselor at the University of Chicago Lab School, a top private school that educated the children of many of the high-profile professors at the University of Chicago.
Archie-Hudson's husband's transfer to California's Camp Pendleton led her to uproot herself and her career to move to the Golden State in 1966, but she quickly landed on her feet. She ran an Upward Bound program at Occidental College from 1966 to 1968 and then became director of college counseling at Los Angeles's Locke High School, remaining there until 1971 and designing a college-counseling program that was implemented across the Los Angeles school district.
Switched to Politics
After she served for a year as director of an Educational Opportunities Program at a branch of the California State University system, Archie-Hudson's range of experience in the education world, and specifically in the area of minority education issues, was recognized by U.S. Representative Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, a popular congresswoman who was a trailblazer for blacks in California politics. Burke hired Archie-Hudson as an education staffer and district office director. Archie-Hudson remained with Burke until the latter's retirement from Congress in 1978, making a host of well-placed political friends along the way.
Working briefly for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in Los Angeles, Archie-Hudson signed on with the staff of the powerful California Assemblyman Willie Brown, who later became Speaker of the California Assembly (and still later mayor of San Francisco). Archie-Hudson polished her credentials by completing a doctoral degree in education at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in the late 1980s, holding two counseling and student-retention posts while she worked on her dissertation. By 1990 Archie-Hudson was ready for electoral office herself; she ran for the Assembly seat (in California's District 48) being vacated by Maxine Waters, soon to be elected to the U.S. Congress. She was elected with 79 percent of the vote and hiked that share to 92 percent in 1992.
Archie-Hudson held the seat until 1996, when term limits forced her to retire. Like Waters, Archie-Hudson (a Democrat) was a strong partisan voice in the Assembly, an advocate for liberal causes not only in the education arena but also in other situations. Archie-Hudson's was a major voice raised in opposition to the ultimately successful Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action in California university admissions and other state-administered programs. After her retirement, Archie-Hudson served on a commission responsible for reforming Los Angeles's city charter, and she was active as an educational consultant. Some speculated that Archie-Hudson might follow Waters into Congress, but she had other plans.
Became Talladega President
Having maintained her connections to Talladega's alumni association and having served for a year on the college's board of trustees, Archie-Hudson was named the first female prexy (or president) of Talladega in 1998. She was the first woman to lead the school, and the first black woman president of any four-year college in Alabama. Archie-Hudson expressed a desire to make a contribution to the institution that had shaped her as a young woman. "It was here that prepared me for [her educational career]," Archie-Hudson told the Birmingham News. "I just assumed I could do it. It never occurred to me that I couldn't."
Archie-Hudson notched some successes in the first months of her tenure at Talladega, boosting student enrollment from 440 to about 540 and making a dent in the school's $4.3 million debt. As the Reconstruction-era buildings of many historically black colleges began to crumble, Archie-Hudson secured federal funds for the renovation of Talladega's historic structures. But the dire financial conditions that prevailed at Talladega and at many other small institutions brought Archie-Hudson grief. After reading a book by one of her predecessors, a man who had served as the school's president a century before, Archie-Hudson mused to the Birmingham News that "the kinds of issues he talked about--not enough money, not enough students, bad pay for the faculty--we could talk about the same things."
In the fall of 2001, Archie-Hudson was notified that her contract at Talladega would not be renewed. Archie-Hudson had been popular with the school's students and faculty, some of whom protested the decision. But trustees cited a desire to see Talladega's leader move more quickly in confronting the institution's problems. Archie-Hudson, who described herself as stunned, found herself looking for a job.
Nearing retirement age, she could easily have closed her educational career. Characteristically, though, she opened a new chapter instead. Bringing her life full circle by returning to Charleston, where she still had several relatives, Archie-Hudson took a job teaching public policy and public administration at the College of Charleston. In 2003 she was named to the steering committee of the Avery Institute for Social Change, an organization focusing on women's health care that was founded by MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient Byllye Avery. Archie-Hudson also co-founded the HBCU Foundation, which continued the work she had done at Talladega in the area of financing capital improvements and investment at historically black colleges and universities. There wasn't an obstacle, it seemed, that could slow Marguerite Archie-Hudson down for long.
Further Reading
Periodicals
Birmingham News, November 23, 1998, p. A1; September 21, 2001, p. C1; September 25, 2001, p. B1.
Black Issues in Higher Education, July 20, 2000, p. 18.
Daily News (Los Angeles), September 25, 1996, p. N15.
Jet, November 2, 1998, p. 40.
Mobile Register, November 29, 1998.
Sacramento Observer, January 29, 1997, p. G11.
StateNet California Journal Weekly, October 24, 1994.
On-line
"Who We Are," The Avery Institute for Social Change, www.averyinstituteforsocialchange.org/who.html (February 12, 2004).
|
 | BOOKS |
 |
|
| Title |
Purchase |
Contributor |
|
| Start Date |
End Date |
Type |
Title |
Contributor |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
| INFORMATION LINKS |
|
|
|
