Teacher Appreciation- Spotlighting Leon Dekalb and Lois Mailou Jones
May is Teacher’s Appreciation Month, and we want to show appreciation to the amazing teachers who chose to dedicate their lives to the betterment of students at Palmer! Today we want to spotlight two spectacular teachers.
The first teacher is Mr. Leon Dekalb. Mr. Dekalb taught at Palmer from 1930–1932. He taught Math, Biology and Music.
DeKalb earned a bachelor’s degree from Lincoln University (PA) and a master’s from Columbia University. Leon Elmer DeKalb made history in 1941 when he was appointed the first African American probation officer in the federal court system. After serving in the Army during WWII, he went on to a distinguished career in the Southern District of New York, where in 1972 he was appointed the first Black chief probation officer. DeKalb helped advance the notion that probation officers, along with their law enforcement roles, could help people struggling with drug and substance abuse. He also instructed new judges in the workings of the pretrial and probation system. After 33 years as a probation officer, he retired in 1974 and died on April 23, 1994.
The second teacher we’re spotlighting today is Mrs. Lois Mailou Jones. She was raised in Boston by working-class parents who emphasized the importance of education and hard work. In 1927, she became the first Black graduate of Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts. After graduating, Jones began designing textiles for several New York firms.
She left in 1928 to take a teaching position at Palmer Memorial Institute in North Carolina. At Palmer, Jones founded the art department, coached basketball, taught folk dancing, and played the piano for Sunday services.
Two years later, she was recruited by Howard University in Washington, D.C., to join its art department. From 1930–77, Jones trained several generations of African American artists, including David Driskell, Elizabeth Catlett, and Sylvia Snowden.
She began earning recognition for the content and technique of her own art. After a sabbatical year in Paris, Jones introduced African tribal art, a motif enormously popular in Parisian galleries, into her canvases, making her one of the only African American female painters to achieve fame abroad in the 1930s and ’40s. She was profoundly impacted by Paris, exhilarated by a country where her race seemed irrelevant. Her 1953 marriage to the Haitian graphic designer Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël influenced her further as she saw the bright colors and bold patterns of Haitian art on annual trips to her husband’s home. In 1970, Jones was commissioned by the United States Information Agency to serve as a cultural ambassador to Africa. She gave lectures, interviewed local artists, and visited museums in 11 countries. This experience led her to further explore African subjects in her work, especially her 1971–1989 paintings.
In 1998, Jones passed away at the age of 92 at her home in Washington, DC. She is buried on Martha’s Vineyard in the Oak Bluffs Cemetery. Lois Mailou Jones’ work is in museums all over the world and valued by collectors. Her paintings grace the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, National Portrait Gallery, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the National Palace in Haiti, the National Center of Afro-American Artists among others.
Palmerites, who was your favorite teacher from your time at Palmer?
This post was written by Julisa Canty
