Hazel Harvey Peace was an important African-American educator, activist, and humanitarian in Fort Worth, Texas. The namesake of an elementary school, municipal building, and library youth center in Fort Worth, Peace overcame racial segregation to provide opportunities for African Americans, youth, and women in Fort Worth, Dallas, and throughout the state of Texas.
Early life and education
Hazel Bernice Harvey was born August 4, 1907 in Waco, Texas to Allen H. and Georgia Mason Harvey; the family moved to Fort Worth three months later. Hazel's father was a Pullman porter on the Missouri and Pacific Railroad, and her mother was a homemaker who also owned a children's clothing shop. An only child and something of a prodigy, young Hazel was reading at the age of four. Hazel Harvey attended James E. Guinn Elementary School through sixth grade, then went to high school at the Fort Worth Colored School, graduating at the age of thirteen. A voracious reader, she spent much of her time at Fort Worth's segregated Carnegie Public Library, where she could check out books but not stay and read them. She attended Howard University, a historically black university in Washington, D.C., where she became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first black sorority in the United States. Graduating in 1923, Hazel Harvey returned to Fort Worth to teach at her alma mater, by then renamed I.M. Terrell High School, while still a teenager herself. Between school years, she attended summer classes at Columbia University in New York, living at the YWCA in Harlem during the height of the Harlem Renaissance. After earning her master's degree from Columbia, she continued her postgraduate education by taking summer courses at the University of Wisconsin, Vassar College, Hampton University, and Atlanta University.
Career
"Mama Hazel"
Hazel Harvey married contractor Joe Peace, a graduate of the Tuskegee Institute, in 1938. She never dropped her maiden name, always using her full name, Hazel Harvey Peace. The couple had no children, but she was nicknamed "Mama Hazel" by her students, whom she considered family. Peace was known as the "matriarch" of I.M. Terrell High School, working there from 1924 until it was closed in 1972 due to court-ordered desegregation. She spent nearly 50 years at the school, first as a teacher, then as counselor, dean of girls, and, finally, vice principal. She taught whatever subject was needed, including English, drama, debate, and history. Peace launched a children's theater at I.M. Terrell, where kids from local black elementary schools could attend plays, as well as a debate club. Due in part to Peace's tireless efforts to make up for the segregated school's lack of resources, I.M. Terrell became known for the quality of its college-prep curriculum and for producing most of Fort Worth's black middle class. Known locally as a "monument to black accomplishment," jazz musician Ornette Coleman, Texas state legislator Reby Cary, Harvard professor James Cash, Jr., and legendary Fort Worth journalist Bob Ray Sanders are among Peace's former students.
Peace worked as a volunteer in the evenings at Fort Worth's John Peter Smith Hospital while she was also teaching at I.M. Terrell, and campaigned for “equalization” of black and white teachers’ salaries. After her retirement, she became more active in the community, as an advocate for youth, women, and the homeless. She served on the Fort Worth Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, Fort Worth Public Library Advisory Council, the board of the Women's Center of Tarrant County, the United Way, the Fort Worth chapter of the NAACP, YWCA, and the reading program at Bethlehem Community Center in Fort Worth. She was the chair of the Mayor's Task Force on Housing, the Near Southeast Citizens Commission, and the Near Southside Neighborhood Advisory Council.
The Fort Worth Public Library held a public celebration for Peace’s 100th birthday in 2007. She died on June 8, 2008 at the age of 100 and was buried alongside her husband at Cedar Hill Memorial Park in Arlington, Texas. Peace made a lasting impact on Fort Worth and the educational community, leaving the proceeds of her estate to Howard University, Texas Wesleyan University, the Fort Worth Public Library Foundation, and Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Elementary School. Peace’s popularity was such that hers was the first public black funeral in Fort Worth, and memorials to Hazel Harvey Peace were entered into the remarks of the U.S. House of Representatives and Congressional Record by U.S. Representatives Michael Burgess and Kay Granger. In 2009, the City of Fort Worth named its newest municipal building, the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods, in honor of this local neighborhood advocate. In 2010, Fort Worth ISD opened the Hazel Harvey Peace Elementary School in southwest Fort Worth.
