Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Museum honors Pompano Beach educational pioneer Blanche Ely
The ribbon took three cuts from a pair of giant scissors, but once it was opened hundreds of people cheered and lined up to tour the inside of Pompano Beach’s newest museum inside the historic former home of wellknown educators and activists Blanche and Joseph Ely.
Among the attendees were residents, Blanche Ely High School alumni, city and school officials, marching band members, dancers and the school’s JROTC team. They gathered for the grand reopening of the Blanche Ely Educational Museum at 1500 NW Sixth Ave., which serves as a way to honor the life and work of the couple.
Derek Davis is a consultant with Davis Kuumba Arts and a curator of the museum.
“The first thing about Ms. Ely that shows how special she was is that they had the school named after her while she was a sitting principal,” he said.
“So she was the principal of the school, and the community knew she did so much for education in the community that they had the school named after her. It was officially named after her in 1952, but the community had already started calling the school Blanche Ely High School before that.”
In addition to her work as principal of the high school at 1201 NW Sixth Ave., Davis said Blanche Ely helped bring new schools to the area and oversaw them once they were built.
“While she was the principal of Ely High School, there were really about three other schools in the area that she was helping to manage and fought to get those schools,” he said. “One for the migrants, one for a housing project — there was a school there — and an elementary school, so she was helping manage the other schools that were around Ely while she was the principal.”
Davis also detailed the couple’s social activism outside of their work in the Broward County school system at the time.
“They were writing letters to actors, to the governor; there’s a letter to the pope on various topics,” he said. “Mr. Ely was the principal for awhile at Dillard High School. In fact, he’s the one that changed the name from Colored School No. 11 to Dillard High School.”
Janice Simmons graduated from Blanche Ely High School in 1974 and toured the museum as it opened. She said she was struck by how much history she saw inside.
“A lot of emotions stirring because she was one of the greatest principals to ever hit this area,” she said. “There will be no more principals that will come through that will stand up to her.”
Simmons described Blanche Ely, who died in 1993, as a tough principal who cared about her
students and disciplined them to make sure they took their school work seriously.
“She would have someone to bring into the office and spank you and if she didn’t think that was enough, she would always tell the dean, ‘spank them on the other side. Hit them on the hard side,’” Simmons said. “But she did it with love. She wanted us to learn, she wanted to make sure we excelled with the same esteemed education that the people had on the east side of the tracks.”
Among the city officials in attendance was Commissioner Beverly Perkins who lived on the same street as Blanche Ely and knew her well and was involved in the opening of the museum.
“I’ve been pushing for this since 2016, but, of course, there were other commissioners before me that were also pushing it, but it just happened to open under my watch,” she said. “But there was a lot of work involved, the inside is great and everyone is enjoying it.”
Blanche Ely was born in North Florida on Jan. 4, 1904 and graduated from Florida A&M University
and received a master's degree from Columbia University. Perkins said that Blanche Ely’s own education informed her decisions in trying to maximize the quality of education Pompano Beach students received.
“It’s because of women like Ms. Blanche Ely and her husband, we call him Professor, who came to Pompano with a vision of education,” Perkins said. “Had Ms. Ely not come to Pompano, we would not
have Blanche Ely High School, we wouldn’t have this house. So what Ms. Blanche Ely did was she chose teachers from all over the world to come teach here and she was very selective in choosing the teachers
to come in and teach here.”’
Joseph Ely died in 1984. Perkins said that Blanche Ely was giving her advice dating back to her early political career in the 1980s, some of which she said did not fully understand or appreciate at the time.
“She said, ‘I want you to know, Perkins, that in leadership you cannot say everything you feel, you can’t express everything you know and you never let them know how to pull your trigger. You always have to be calm and cool about everything, even when you’re upset,’” Perkins said.
“I didn’t understand what she meant by that until she died. The day she died, I thought, ‘oh, I get it. I get it now.’ But she was full of wisdom and advice and whenever she called you over and had some advice to give you, you better listen.
The museum is free and open to everyone from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays.