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 Margaret A. Hart, 92
 February 20, 2004
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Margaret A. Hart, 92, of 24 Ide Road died Friday, Feb. 20, 2004, at Sweet Brook Care Centers, where she had resided for a few months.
A longtime teacher in Pittsfield and a local civil rights activist, she was the first student of color to graduate from the former North Adams State Teachers College, now Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Miss Hart's teaching career and community service spanned more than five decades. She taught at the Hampton Institute Training School in Alabama; public schools in Evansville, Ind., and at North Junior High School, now Reid Middle School, in Pittsfield, until retiring in 1976. She was the first black to hold such posts.
She received numerous honors and awards over the years, and her portrait was included in a mural of prominent black citizens placed in Pitt Park in Pittsfield in 1995.
"She was dedicated to the kids of Pittsfield," Superintendent of Schools William D. Travis said in 2001, when a scholarship fund was established in Miss Hart's honor at MCLA. "She retired the same year that I came to Pittsfield, but she continued to volunteer whenever she could. Although I never asked her, I know she faced racism in Pittsfield and in Pittsfield schools."
Travis noted that signal events in American history and in the history of black Americans directly touched Miss Hart's life. She earned her master's degree during New York's Harlem Renaissance.
Actively involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she taught school in places as varied as the deep South and the Midwest. During World War II, she regularly worked in a Red Cross canteen.
Born in Williamstown on Dec. 19, 1911, daughter of Henry Hart Sr. and Kate Alexander Hart, she graduated from the former Williamstown High School. She graduated from the former North Adams State Teachers College in 1935, and received a master's degree from Columbia University Teachers College in New York City in 1939 and an honorary doctor of pedagogy from MCLA.
In the late 1940s, Miss Hart, whose family founded and still operates a construction company in Williamstown, returned to the county after teaching in Indiana. She taught social science for 26 years at North Junior High School and established a contest to introduce the city's schoolchildren to the history of black Americans.
She was a life member of First United Methodist Church and of the NAACP, for which she served as chairman of the local chapter's education committee.
She leaves two brothers, Thomas A. Hart Sr. of Washington, D.C., and James Y. Hart Sr., president of Hart Construction Co.; two sisters-in-law, Mary Hart and Barbara Hart, nine nieces and eight nephews.
She was predeceased by three brothers, Henry Hart Jr., William F. Hart Sr. and Allen W.P. Hart; a nephew, James Y. Hart Jr., and a sister-in-law, Adalyne Hart.
FUNERAL NOTICE — The funeral for Miss Hart, who died Feb. 20, 2004, will be conducted Saturday, Feb. 28, at 4 at First United Methodist Church of Williamstown. Friends may call at the church from 2 to 4, when the family will be in attendance. Entombment will take place in Sherman Burbank Memorial Chapel in Eastlawn Cemetery.
Burial will be in the family plot in Eastlawn Cemetery in the spring. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions may be made to the Margaret A. Hart Scholarship Fund at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts through the office of GEORGE M. HOPKINS FUNERAL HOME, 61-67 Spring St., Williamstown, MA 01267.
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