Ruby G. Woodson

In 1989 Ruby Woodson retired to Sarasota, but immersed herself in the affairs of the community. She participated in many cultural and civic activities, from the Asolo Center for the Performing Arts and Habitat for Humanity to the United Way as well as in local and regional long-range planning charrettes. She ultimately was moved to found the Florida Academy for African-American Culture (FAAC), an institution dedicated to educational advancement and cultural preservation with a special emphasis on children from pre-school through high school.

One 1979 graduate of the academy, Lisa S. Martin, later was graduated from Yale University and Emory University and is a practicing psychologist in Maryland. She attests to the power Woodson had to inspire her students, making them feel able to meet any type of academic challenge and motivating them to win acceptance at the institutions of their choice, be it Ivy League, the big ten, or top southern colleges. Woodson's achievements were lauded in the Washington Post and by the United States Department of Education.

She spent thirteen years teaching chemistry and physics in the Washington, D.C. public school system before founding Cromwell Academy, a private secondary school to serve gifted minority students in the district. The academy was founded in 1973 in a church annex and soon was sending many of its students to classes at Georgetown University and Howard University for credits toward their secondary diplomas. The inspiration for the name of the academy was Otelia Cromwell, an educator who was the first black woman awarded a Ph.D. by Yale University. A reputation developed quickly by the academy for its academic achievements, attracting the enrollment of their children by prominent people as well as the gifted and aspiring members of disadvantaged groups whose teachers advised application to the academy. Bill Cosby sent his son, Ennis, and the president of Venezuela sent his daughter.

In 1957, while she was on a vacation in her hometown of Sarasota and researching materials for completion of her master's degree, Ruby Woodson was refused entry to the public library in Sarasota. She made a formal objection to her treatment that she took to city and county government officials. Her efforts led to the elimination of racial barriers to community services paid for by the taxation of all residents. Soon the vestiges of segregation began to fall in Sarasota and all residents were granted access to the library.

At the age of nineteen, in June 1951 Woodson was awarded her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Florida A & M University in Tallahassee, Florida. She received her master of arts degree in education from American University in Washington, D.C. in 1960. Her masters thesis was entitled, Some Effects of the Atomic Era on the Teaching of High School Chemistry in the United States.

At the age of fifteen, she was the valedictorian of her class of 1947 when she was graduated from Booker High School in Sarasota.

Ruby Garrard Woodson (June 22, 1931 – February 8, 2008) was an educator and chemistry teacher who founded Cromwell Academy in Washington, D. C. and Florida Academy of African American Culture in Sarasota, Florida.