Rosa Dixon Bowser

Portrait Courtesy of Meredith Carrington and Barry O'Keefe

ROSA DIXON BOWSER BRANCH
E. Clay Street and W. Clay Street

Rosa Dixon Bowser was born enslaved on January 7, 1855 in Amelia County, Virginia to Henry and Augusta Dixon. She relocated to Richmond during grade school where she trained at the Richmond Colored Normal School through the Freedmen’s Bureau where she received the second-highest marks in her class – becoming the first Black educator with Richmond Public Schools in 1872. During her career, she served as supervisor of teachers at the Baker School before retiring in 1923. She also taught at the local YMCA and organized the precursor to the Virginia State Teachers’ Association, also known as the Virginia Teachers’ Reading Circle – serving as president from 1890 to 1892. In 1879, she married James Bowser, with whom she birthed a son, before his departure due to tuberculosis. She was a respected community leader with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Industrial Home School for Colored Girls, Virginia Manual Labor School for Colored Boys, Richmond Woman’s League, Virginia Colored Anti-Tuberculosis League, National Association of Colored Women, Woman’s Department of the Negro Reformatory Association, Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, National Federation of Afro-American Women, and Committee on Domestic Science at the Hampton Negro Conferences. She was a published author who pinned essays, such as “What Role is the Educated Negro Woman to Play in the Uplifting of Her Race?” In 1902, she became one of the first women to register to vote in the state after ratification of the nineteenth amendment. In 1925, the first branch of the Richmond Public Library for patrons of color was named in her honor. She was an active member of First African Baptist Church until departing from complications due to diabetes on February 7, 1931 and being laid to rest at East End Cemetery.