By: Heather Butina-Sutton
Hazel Anne Hainsworth was born to Harry Alvin Hainsworth and Beatrice Cornelia Morre Hainsworth on September 12, 1905, in Navasota, Texas. At five years old, Hazel’s parents relocated her and her younger brother, Robert Wendell (1909-1981), to Houston’s Fifth Ward, which housed twenty percent of the city’s growing African American population. By the time her sister, Maye Frances (1913-2013), was born three years later, her father had begun his career with the U.S. Postal Service as a mail carrier. It was at time of transition in Houston, like other cities, when streetcars transported people around town and automobiles were just beginning to appear on city streets. Young recalled her father’s work with the post office in a 2007 interview, saying, “They had him with a horse and wagon,” adding, his “horse knew every stop on Main Street.” Meanwhile, her mother stayed at home to raise Hazel and her siblings. Throughout her life Hazel spoke fondly of her parents, especially when it came to education. “They sacrificed so much…to send us to college, all three of us.”
In 1921, Hazel graduated from Houston’s Colored High School (later renamed Booker T. Washington High School) and moved to Washington, D.C. to study Latin at Howard University. She recalled how some of her classmates at Howard were surprised by her math, science, and language abilities. Despite being an underfunded school in the segregated South, Colored High was one of the oldest public African American schools in the United States and had focused its curriculum on both vocational training and liberal arts studies. The three-story, ten-room schoolhouse stood in the Fourth Ward at the intersection of San Felipe Street (now West Dallas) and Frederick Street.When Hazel graduated from Howard, she chose to return to Houston where she began her teaching career.
Hazel’s first position in Houston schools was as a substitute teacher at the newly built Jack Yates High School in 1926, but it was not long before administrators brought her on full-time to teach Latin. Hazel attributed the success of those early years to Third Ward’s community. “Parents and teachers were very cooperative,” she said. “We never would have just kept going … had the parents not been wonderful.” In addition to parental support, Hazel and her colleagues helped each other avoid segregated transportation by carpooling. “I bought a car and transported my friends,” she recalled, “They would pay me to take them to school and back, and I’d use that to buy the gas … I had a nice group … [but] this fella … he’d be late every evening.”
Hazel later became the dean of girls at Yates before transferring to Wheatley High School in 1958. That year Houston Independent School District (HISD) opened a new Yates High School building and demoted Yates’s principal, William Holland, rather than allow Holland to take his place as head of the new school. HISD replaced him with the principal of archrival Phillis Wheatley High School, John Codwell, and, in the process, shuffled several faculty members between the schools as well. After approximately forty-six years of service, Young retired from HISD in 1972, and upon her death, had been the last surviving member of Yates original faculty.
Young’s students included notables such as Texas Representative Harold Duttong, Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee, Judge Andrew Jefferson, Texas Southern University president Dr. Robert J. Terry, Houston City Councilmember Judson Robinson Jr., Congressman Mickey Leland, Reverend Robert Hayes Sr., and Katy Councilmember Marsherria Wilson.
Hazel Young’s legacy reaches beyond her teaching career. While attending Howard University, Hazel pledged to Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek letter sorority for African American women in the country. Hazel Joined AKA in 1922 while a student at Howard. In 1928, she and five other members, Gladys Davis Simon, Anna Belle Stokes, Erma Sweatt Wallace, Lillie Vance Chester, and Marie Viola Butler Taylor, organized the first AKA graduate chapter in Texas, Alpha Kappa Omega, whose goal was to “[promote] self-esteem and unity…[empower] chapter members to excel academically [and] to bring out the best in each individual.” Hazel also served as the Basileus (President) of the chapter in its early years from 1932 to 1933.
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