English: Biography: A resident of San Francisco since 1918, Katherine Stewart Flippin is an educator who has worked extensively with atypical children. She was born in Portland, Ore., the only daughter of McCants and Mary Weir Stewart. After dropping out of high school in her last year, she worked at a department store for the next 15 years. She married Robert Browning Flippin, an ardent community activist, who became executive director of the Booker T. Washington Community Service Center. Soon thereafter, Mrs. Flippin returned to school to complete her high school education, and go on to earn bachelor's and master's degrees in early childhood education at San Francisco State College. While still a student, she was a master teacher and a supervising teacher in the nursery school at the college, and in 1949 was appointed to the faculty. She helped establish an experimental unit called Aid for Brain-Damaged Children, Inc., which sought to discover how nonmotorhandicapped, brain-injured children deviate in visual and auditory areas. She also was a teacher at the Northern California School for Cerebral Palsied and Others and was able to incorporate many of the newly developed techniques. In 1966 she was asked to coordinate the Head Start program in Pacifica, Calif. The culmination of her career came in 1968 when she became director of the Cooper's Corner Child Care Center in Pacifica, where she was able to use all the skills acquired throughout her professional life. Retiring as director in 1972, she continues as a consultant. Mrs. Flippin is also deeply committed to collecting and preserving documents about the history of Black people in the West. She has been president of Kappa Delta Pi and has been active in the NAACP, San Francisco Consumer Action, and Children's Home Society.

Description: The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century. Photograph taken by Judith Sedwick
Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Collection: Black Women Oral History Project
Research Guide: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_bwohp

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