Marcus Foster

Marcus Albert Foster (March 31, 1923 – November 6, 1973) was an American educator who gained a national reputation for educational excellence while serving as principal of Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1966–1969), as Associate Superintendent of Schools in Philadelphia (1969–1970), and as the first black superintendent of a large city school district.

He graduated in 1947 from Cheyney State College, a historically black university.

He earned a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution.

His first cousin, Justine Wilkinson Washington, also became a noted educator.

From 1957 to 1970 Foster taught in the Philadelphia public schools, and served as principal of Dunbar Elementary School, O.V. Catto School for Boys, and Gratz High School.

He was noted for his work at Gratz, where he was more successful than predecessors in inspiring the students.

He also served as Associate Superintendent for Community Relations.

Foster received the prestigious Philadelphia Award in 1969, which recognizes individuals who have made positive contributions to the city of Philadelphia.

After his death, several sites were named in his honor.

He was appointed in 1970 as Superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District in Oakland, California.

Foster moved to Oakland in 1970 when he was appointed Superintendent of Oakland Public Schools.

He was one of the first black superintendents of any major urban school system.

Robert Blackburn, a white colleague in Philadelphia, followed him and was appointed as a deputy superintendent.

Foster became highly respected in Oakland, negotiating in a volatile environment with numerous groups and people of various political orientations.

He worked to raise the success of students in the minority-majority schools, where many families struggled with poverty.

Foster was assassinated in 1973 by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a newly founded leftist terrorist group.

Marcus Albert Foster was born in Athens, Georgia, the youngest of five children.

When he was three, his family moved to Philadelphia, joining the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South.

Raised by a single mother, he attended public schools in Philadelphia, graduating from South Philadelphia High School.

One of his grandfathers was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), and Foster's mother Alice stressed education for all her children.

She encouraged his mastery of Standard English.

She highlighted its importance as the dominant syntax.

As a young man, Foster was both exceptionally scholastic and rebellious, opting to frequent the Club Ziger where one had to "smoke a stogie and drink a lot of wine to get in."

Furthermore, as a member of the Trojans, a neighborhood men's club, his comrade Frye noted Foster "could hold his hands up".

This broad range of youth experience aided Foster throughout his life, and he had an ability to connect with and inspire students of myriad backgrounds, while drawing together disparate adult groups advocating for alternative, at times oppositional, visions of social reform.

There had been a record voter turnout in the May 1973 election for mayor, a part-time position.

Republican incumbent John H. Reading won a third four-year term by defeating Democrat Bobby Seale, a co-founder of the Black Panthers and advocate of social programs.

Foster worked with the groups they represented and also within the environment of a state governed by conservative Republican Ronald Reagan.

Foster was shot dead on November 6, 1973, and his deputy Robert Blackburn was wounded as they left a school board meeting.

Members of an unknown group, named the Symbionese Liberation Army, claimed responsibility.

The SLA sent letters to media claiming that they killed Foster because of his alleged support of a plan to require a student identification card system in Oakland, which they called "fascist".

The proposed program was intended to reduce vagrancy and keep non-student drug-dealers off campus, and Foster had already gained support from the board to modify it to meet community concerns.

Foster was shot eight times with hollow-point bullets that had been packed with cyanide, a detail that the police did not initially publicize so it could be used as a calling card if necessary.

Blackburn was wounded but survived.

Police originally discounted the flyers from the unknown SLA, but when the group noted the cyanide in the bullets, law enforcement realized they had a claim.

The group was later classified as terrorist based on actions including kidnapping and armed robberies.

Foster is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.

His widow, Albertine Ramseur Foster, died in 2011.

She was buried alongside him.

Their daughter, Marsha Foster Boyd, is President Emerita of Ecumenical Theological Seminary in Detroit, Michigan.