Herbert R. Bracken was a gentleman and a scholar. Through hard work and tireless study, he furthered his education and found his vocation.
Bracken broke the color barrier at Akron Public Schools in 1940 when the board of education hired him as the district’s first black teacher. He was determined to make a difference in young people’s lives just as other teachers had helped him.
“My grandfather used to tell me, ‘Get your education. It’s the one thing nobody can take away from you.’ ” Bracken once told the Beacon Journal. “I grew up believing that.”
The son of Fannie and Herbert B. Bracken was born March 16, 1909, in a farmhouse on a former plantation in Gallatin, Tenn. Decades earlier, his grandmother had toiled on the property as a slave.
Young Herb Bracken walked 6 miles each day to attend a segregated, one-room school, and trekked 10 miles to a segregated high school. After graduation, he rode 40 miles on a train to attend historically black Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College, but dropped out two years later because of a lack of funds.
Bracken was hired as principal of a segregated elementary in Fayette County, Tenn., because he had two years of higher education. Just getting to class was an ordeal during the Great Depression.
“When it was dry, there were 6 inches of dust,” Bracken recalled. “When it rained, there was an equal depth of mud.”
After a year, Bracken transferred to a school in Hollow Rock, Tenn. He met his future wife, Eskimore Bridges, at a card party in 1931 and they wed in 1933.
Dreaming of a better life, the couple moved north in 1936 to faraway Akron, where Bracken’s father had found a job at a rubber plant.
The younger Bracken worked as a janitor at Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. to save money for college. He enrolled at the University of Akron in 1937 and majored in education while continuing to scrub the factory at night.
“I have always been able to thank God for having half a glass of milk, rather than crying over the half that was spilled,” Bracken said. “I suppose that I am a perpetual optimist.”
He was a nontraditional student — a 30-year-old senior — who excelled in the classroom and flourished as an orator. He won a UA speech contest with an address titled The Economic Color Line, captured the Ohio collegiate title in 1939 and finished second in the national competition in Chicago.
Bracken received his bachelor’s degree in education in 1940 and dared to apply for a job in Akron Public Schools. Only 15 years earlier, the Akron board had four members who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. But the times had changed and Bracken led the charge.
In a September 1940 article, the Beacon Journal casually noted: “For the first time, the board hired a Negro as a teacher. He is Herbert R. Bracken, Akron university graduate, who won a considerable reputation as an orator.”
The new teacher was assigned to Bryan Elementary School, a predominantly black school in the Little Cuyahoga Valley. Children who had always had white teachers looked up and saw a black man at the head of the class. Suddenly, kids had a concrete example that they could succeed through hard work — just like their instructor.
“I would not be human if I did not admit that I am very proud of the small part I played in changing the scope of things in Akron,” Bracken admitted years later. “I would have liked a little less of the spotlight. But I suppose I was looked upon as the young man who was going to make good.”
Bracken and his wife raised three children, Bunday, Herbert Jr. and Barbara, in their home on Wellington Avenue and later Diagonal Road. The family patriarch was active in local groups, including the NAACP, Urban League and Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. A devoted Mason, he served as grandmaster of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Ohio.
After seven years at Bryan, he transferred to East High School, where he taught social studies, civics, speech and other classes. He also taught at Akron Night High School. In 1949, he earned his master’s degree in education from UA.
Small in stature, Bracken commanded respect in the classroom and challenged his students to think for themselves.
In a February 1966 profile of the educator, Beacon Journal columnist John de Groot wrote: “To the students, Mr. Bracken is the source of a never-ending barrage of deliciously multi-syllable words. They love it. His voice is deep and musical, marking a startling contrast to his average frame.
“Hearing the words roll out, you expect them to have come gushing from some mountain of a man. But no. There is only Mr. Bracken. The mountain is inside him.”
Herbert R. Bracken was only 61 when he passed away in 1970, the 30th anniversary of his hiring. The pioneer educator was laid to rest at Glendale Cemetery in Akron. In 1995, he was posthumously inducted into the East High School Hall of Fame.
Bracken was always proud that blacks and whites were equal in praising and criticizing him when he began teaching in Akron.
“Certain whites felt I was moving too fast. Certain Negroes felt I was moving too slowly,” he once said. “That was the beauty and I knew I was doing the right thing.
“If all of one group had praised me and all of the other had scorned me, I would have known I wasn’t doing the right thing.”
Copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of the book Lost Akron from The History Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.