Sallie Brooke Capps: Education Trailblazer in North Texas

Abstract

This thesis closely examines the life of Sallie Brooke Capps (1864-1946), a liberal-feminist progressive reformer who passionately advocated for better academic opportunities for young white women and children in North Texas during the first-half of the twentieth century. At a time when women seldom held leadership positions and instead trained to lead lives as domestic household managers, Capps found a way to combine both. Moreover, her support for the education profession opened the door for many young women who came after her to attend college and become successful teachers and administrators. As the vice-president of the Texas Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher Association in Dallas, Capps forged close professional connections with female reformers who shared the same progressive ideas as her and used her networking to constantly champion for additional programs that promoted the welfare of children at home, in church, and in school. Capps was also an instrumental part in the development of the popular Fort Worth Kindergarten Association's teaching college and the College of Industrial Arts in Denton, where she consistently put the best interests of the female students first and proudly served as the secretary on the latter institution's Board of Regents for eighteen years. Furthermore, Capps's involvement in and devotion to church and community activities were part of Fort Worth’s civic growth during a critical period of expansion. This study attempts for the first time to analyze Sallie B. Capps’s historical relevance in the state’s broad history, utilizing her personal papers and diaries, Texas education records, a variety of organizational records from Texas Woman's University and Fort Worth newspaper clippings, and an assortment of secondary sources about the history of education in North Texas.