Doris Garrett Brevard
1930 - 2018
Brevard was born in 1930 to Dr. Henry Middleton Garrett (1889-1971) and Gladys Tibbs Garrett (1893-1978). Her father was a prominent dentist on Pittsburgh’s North Side. He received his undergraduate degree from Biddle University (now Johnson C. Smith University) in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1909 and his degree in dental medicine from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in 1913. Brevard’s mother, Gladys, was a well-known society leader in Pittsburgh’s African American community. She was a member of the Women’s Auxiliary to the NAACP, taking leadership roles in both fund-raising and membership drives. She also belonged to several social organizations including The Ducks and the Saturday Card Club.
Brevard attended Allegheny High School on Pittsburgh’s North Side, graduating in 1948. She received her undergraduate degree in education from the University of Pittsburgh, and a master’s from Columbia University. Brevard earned a Principal’s Diploma from the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. In 1954, she started her career with Pittsburgh Public Schools as a librarian at Vann Elementary School in the Hill District. She later moved to Baxter Elementary in Homewood-Brushton before returning to Vann, first as acting principal in 1968, then principal in 1969.
As a principal, Brevard favored structured, teacher-centric classrooms rather than the more unstructured approach popular at the time. Her emphasis was on maintaining order, tight discipline, and setting high expectations. Brevard’s approach worked at Vann where she was able to eliminate the racial achievement gap. In her over 20 years as principal at the school, Vann students scored at or above the national average in standardized tests. A 1983 report to the National Institute of Education, An Abashing Anomaly, profiled Brevard’s school and two other successful Pittsburgh schools with overwhelmingly black student bodies. The report attributed their success to principals who “generated a climate of high expectations for student performance, mobilized consensus around achievement as the highest priority [and] were willing to disagree with their superiors regarding these choices.”
Brevard’s success at Vann led to visits from educators from around the world who wanted to see how she made an inner city school work so well. She was featured in a video documentary by Indiana University on schools around the country that were beating the odds, and Kappa Delta Pi, an honor society in education, selected Vann Elementary for its list of “100 Good Schools.” Pittsburgh also recognized Brevard’s success—in 1983 she was chosen as Principal of the Year by the city-wide Parent Teacher Association; in 1986, to mark Women’s Equality Day, the Mayor’s Task Force on Women chose Brevard as one 12 Pittsburgh women in “untypical jobs;” in 1990 Pittsburgh Magazine named her one of its “Real Pittsburghers” who made contributions to the city; and in 1991 she was given the Tribute to Women award by the YWCA of Greater Pittsburgh in recognition for her contribution to the city and the development of women in the workforce and community.
Brevard retired as principal of Vann Elementary in 1996. She was married for over 37 years to Warren G. Brevard, a City of Pittsburgh Police officer and former head of security at Mercy Hospital. Brevard was also a member of the Pittsburgh chapter of The Links, Inc., a women’s national social organization, and the Aurora Reading Club. She died in 2018.
In addition to her impact in Pittsburgh, Brevard also had deep historical ties to the US Civil War. Her great-grandfather was Civil War hero Robert Smalls. Born enslaved in Beaufort, SC, after the war Smalls was elected to the South Carolina legislature and the US House of Representatives during Reconstruction. He served in the 44th, 45th, 47th, 48th, and 49th Congress. Most famously, in May 1862, while still enslaved, Smalls and a crew of fellow enslaved men, commandeered a Confederate transport ship, the CSS Planter, in Charleston Harbor. Smalls navigated through the harbor and Confederate forces to Union-controlled waters and surrendered the ship. The seventeen enslaved on board were thus freed.
