Alabama Women's Hall of Fame
Evelyn Daniel Anderson became a paraplegic at age four when her spine was severed by a stray .22 caliber bullet. She was never able to sit, stand or walk again. She was confined to a gurney (“a rolling table”), upon which she would lie prone, propped by an arm bent at the elbow.
Never considering herself disabled, Anderson graduated with honors from Greensboro High School and earned a bachelor of arts degree (art and history) from Judson College in Marion. Anderson viewed her paraplegia only as a “physical inconvenience.” In the decades before rehabilitation programs and legal initiatives to support the disabled, she met each challenge with both determination and equanimity.
She began teaching in 1948 as an “unofficial art teacher in a vacant classroom” at Greensboro High school because an Alabama law prohibited hiring seriously handicapped teachers. Miss Anderson inspired a State Senator and the Alabama State School Superintendent to work for the passage of a new law (enacted in 1953) to repeal the prohibition. She then became the first seriously handicapped professional hired by an Alabama public school (1954).
Desiring to guide and advise students as well as teach them, Anderson earned a master’s degree in education in counseling in 1964 from the University of Alabama. Thereafter, she taught English and Spanish and served as guidance counselor at Greensboro High School.
Pioneering the rights of those with physical disabilities, she inspired the city of Greensboro to provide accessibility for the mobility disabled before any law required such accommodations.
Anderson won numerous awards and honors, including Outstanding Educator (1974), Outstanding Counselor of the Year (1975-76) and the Alabama Handicapped Professional Woman of the Year (1977). She served on Alabama Governor’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped (1977). In 1976, Alabama Educational Television (now Alabama Public Television) aired a short documentary film about her life as an educator and inspiration for children.
An active member of many professional organizations, Anderson provided inspirational leadership to the educational community at the local and state levels and spoke at numerous club and school functions around the state. She was a master teacher for over 30 years, retiring in 1982 after teaching, officially and unofficially, in the Greensboro public schools for 34 years. In August 1993, the National Spinal Cord Injury Association recognized Evelyn Anderson as the then-oldest survivor of a spinal cord injury. In retirement, she continued to be as active as ever.
Evelyn Anderson died on October 7, 1998.
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Alabama Women's Hall of Fame