Elvare Gaskin started school at age five in a one-room “colored” school in Scotland, St. Mary’s County, Maryland during segregation. Her grandmother boarded schoolteachers, and they would sneak Elvare into the classroom. She loved learning and loved teaching.  With the assistance of her grandfather, she attended Cardinal Gibbons Institute. When it closed, she transferred to Pomonkey High School in Charles County where she boarded with family friends. After high school. she earned a teaching degree and later her master’s degree from Morgan State.  Her first teaching job was in the one-room Gravelly Knolls School in Oraville, Maryland, where she taught African American students in grades one through seven. The one-room schools would require a single teacher to teach all seven grades with sometimes as many as forty children in one room.

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Elvare Gaskin went on to teach at other one- and two-room schools, through the consolidation of schools in St. Mary’s County, and, finally, during the transition to an integrated system. She ended her forty-six-year career as principal of Green Holly Elementary School, the first fully state-funded school for special education children in the state of Maryland.

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“To see those children who were limited be able to grasp enough information, to be able to work on their own, to get a job, and to work. And, also what’s gratifying is that several of my students taught in the same building with me while I was still teaching there. They went on to Bowie (State College), graduated and came back to the county and taught. I was just so happy that I had had a part in their lives.” ~Elvare Gaskin

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As a Black teacher in a segregated system, Ms. Gaskin suffered discrimination in a variety of ways. The quote below illustrates one of those ways:

“We used to get our checks once a month. When I got married, I got my check three days earlier than the others (Black teachers). My maiden name was Smith. Gaskin just had to be a White person. So they sent my check all year long with the White teachers. They didn’t know any better. Then at the end of the year when I went up (to Leonardtown) to carry my register – we had these darn registers – and she said, “You’re Mrs. Gaskin?” I said, “I am.”   I didn’t get another check early.” ~Elvare Gaskin.

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“My mother practiced a different kind of activism. She did not spend her time protesting, instead, she had a ‘get things done personality.’” ~Alonzo Gaskin.

 

For example. Ms. Gaskin was instrumental in encouraging and supporting Elizabeth Barber Walker to apply for admissions to St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Ms. Walker was the first African American admitted to the school. Her admission and later graduation led to the desegregation of the college in 1962.