Utahns honor pioneering teacher

When Dovie Goodwin applied to teach school in Ogden, she didn't expect it to take three years before she would get the job.

Goodwin was surprised when she was turned away in 1958 despite her math degree and prior teaching experience.

"He told me they didn't hire blacks for secondary education," she said. "I thought he was joking. I had my degree."

She tried again, and then after earning an elementary teaching certificate, Goodwin was finally hired to teach the sixth grade at Pingree Elementary in 1961.

Now, 32 years after her retirement, one of Utah's first African American educators is being honored for her commitment to children's education.

On Friday, Goodwin, 97, will be presented with the teacher of the year award at the Utah Martin Luther King Jr. Commission's 2006 Drum Major Awards Luncheon.

Others to be honored by the King Commission include: Volunteers of the year Pamela Atkinson and Pastor France Davis, community-based organization Utah Issues and adopt-a-school North Star Elementary. Rep. Duane Bourdeaux, D-Salt Lake, will be given special recognition.

Goodwin, who retired from tutoring last year, is still actively working to recruit tutors to help boost what she sees as continued low achievement among black children.

"It's still pretty well segregated; they're not teaching our children," she said. "It's pitiful."

The event Friday, keynoted by former Utah Jazz player Thurl Bailey, is one of several area events planned commemorating King, who was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis.

Both the Salt Lake and Ogden branches of the NAACP will honor King on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Jan. 16. The Ogden branch will hold its annual prayer breakfast and the Salt Lake branch is sponsoring an awards luncheon.

Many of the events will also honor Rosa Parks, who died in 2005. Parks was arrested in 1955 for not giving up her seat to a white person. Her defiance led to a yearlong bus boycott that ended after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws requiring segregated buses were illegal.

Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake Branch NAACP, says the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Luncheon has honored Parks since 1992 with a Rosa Parks Award.

"We will continue our recognition and awareness surrounding the works of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks," Williams said.