291jili Barbara Bowman Dies at 96; Visionary Educator for Preschoolers

Barbara T. Bowman291jili, an educator who trained generations of teachers in helping underprivileged children in their preschool years begin to fulfill their potential, died on Nov. 4 in Chicago. She was 96.

Her death, in a hospital, was caused by heart failure, said her daughter, Valerie B. Jarrett, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and now the chief executive of the Obama Foundation in Chicago.

A scion of a trailblazing Black family, Mrs. Bowman was a founder of the Chicago School for Early Childhood Education, now known as the Erikson Institute. The organization has had a profound influence on education policy in Chicago, across Illinois and in the federal government, particularly under the Obama administration, with its focus on early education.

Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, who described Mrs. Bowman as a personal hero, recently created a state department of early childhood education.

The Chicago School was created in 1966 at a time when early childhood education programs for low-income families, like Head Start, were on the rise — all part of a national effort to address the needs of disadvantaged children, who often arrive at elementary school without the social and academic skills that are necessary to succeed. Mrs. Bowman’s school sought to fill the gap between the growth of those programs and the number of teachers trained to teach in them.

“At this point, young Black children are not getting a chance,” she said in an interview with The HistoryMakers Digital Archive in 2002. “They’re being cut off at the knees before they get to first grade.”

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