Pearl Dale and Audrey Parker

Born in the South in the early 1900s, Pearl Dale experienced first-hand the barriers that African-Americans of her generation faced in pursuing a better life for themselves. Pearl’s parents owned a farm in Kentucky where she and her brother, Walter, and sister, Audrey, were raised. The Dales managed to send all of their children to college, which was no small feat for African-American families of that era. The three siblings eventually became teachers, with Pearl and her sister Audrey moving to Ohio in the 1940s and taking positions in Dayton Public Schools. The sisters went on to attain master’s degrees and continued teaching in Dayton until their retirement in the late 1970s.
In a letter written to The Dayton Foundation in 1990, Pearl recollected the many hardships she encountered as a single African-American woman trying to make her own way.