Paula Penn-Nabrit

Paula Penn-Nabrit is an American author, business consultant, and homeschool advocate based in Westerville, Ohio. She is best known as the author of Morning by Morning: How We Home-Schooled Our African-American Sons to the Ivy League (2003), a memoir recounting how she and her late husband, Charles “C. Madison” Nabrit, homeschooled their three sons after withdrawing them from an elite private school in 1991.^[1][2] She is frequently described as a pioneering figure in the Black homeschooling movement, having homeschooled at a time when comparatively few resources existed to support African-American homeschooling families.^[3]

Early life and education

Penn-Nabrit is a native of Columbus, Ohio, and the oldest of her siblings.^[4] She graduated from the Columbus School for Girls, where she served as student government president and was, by her own account, the only Black student in her class and the third Black graduate in the school's history.^[4] She enrolled at Wellesley College in 1972, pursuing a double major in philosophy and political science; while there she worked for the Massachusetts Black Caucus, performed and toured with Wellesley's Ethos Choir, and interned in Washington, D.C., for Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.^[4] She went on to earn a law degree from the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University.^[5][2]

She married Charles Madison Nabrit in 1976.^[6] The couple had three sons: twins Charles and Damon, born in 1980, and Evan, born in 1982.^[6] According to one account, the Nabrit family's decision to homeschool carried particular weight because C. Madison Nabrit was related to civil rights attorney James Nabrit, who argued Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court alongside Thurgood Marshall, a connection that led some relatives to view the family's move away from traditional schooling as a departure from that educational legacy.^[3]

Homeschooling her sons

After a job transfer took the family from Ohio to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1983, Penn-Nabrit worked as a securities consultant for American Transtech, AT&T's newly formed stock-transfer subsidiary, before leaving in 1986 to found her own consulting firm.^[4] The family later returned to Ohio.^[4] In 1991, following what she and her husband concluded were racially charged incidents and inadequate diversity at the exclusive country day school their sons attended in a Columbus suburb, the couple withdrew all three boys—Evan, then nine, and twins Charles and Damon, then eleven—from the school and began homeschooling them.^[2][7]

Because both parents were self-employed and working from home, and because the family lived in a university town, they were able to design a curriculum, hire graduate-student tutors, and supplement their sons' education with specialized summer camps, cultural activities, and travel.^[8] Penn-Nabrit has said the boys resisted homeschooling throughout much of the nine-year process; she has recalled one of her sons asking, “How could you keep us trapped here like animals?”, and has said the family did not always know what they were doing and endured criticism from onlookers who considered the decision a mistake.^[7] The twins, Charles and Damon, were ultimately admitted to Princeton University, and Evan attended Amherst College.^[2]

Morning by Morning

Penn-Nabrit's memoir, Morning by Morning: How We Home-Schooled Our African-American Sons to the Ivy League, was published by Villard Books in February 2003.^[9] The book describes the family's transition into homeschooling and covers subjects including curriculum design, structuring the school day, extracurricular and athletic activities, cultural exposure, and navigating the college application process; each chapter closes with practical advice aimed at parents generally, whether or not they homeschool.^[8][10] A Publishers Weekly review noted that the book is candid about the sons' initial opposition to homeschooling and about aspects of the experience Penn-Nabrit felt she could have handled differently, while a Booklist review credited it with a thoughtful critique of American race relations alongside its practical guidance.^[10][2]

Reception and advocacy

Michael Fletcher, then a national education reporter for The Washington Post, wrote that the book offers a long list of practical tips useful to anyone considering homeschooling and that its lessons extend to parents generally, regardless of where their children attend school.^[11] Legal scholar Derrick Bell cited Morning by Morning in his book Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board and the Quest for Racial Justice, in a chapter on the search for effective schools in the post-Brown era.^[11] Penn-Nabrit discussed the book and her family's homeschooling experience in a 2003 interview on NPR's Tavis Smiley Show.^[12]

Penn-Nabrit has continued to be invoked as an early and influential voice in Black homeschooling. In 2021, she appeared as an interview subject on Contemporary Perspectives on Black Homeschooling, a video series produced by Black Family Homeschool Educators and Scholars (BFHES) and hosted by BFHES co-founder Cheryl Fields-Smith.^[13] She served as keynote speaker for BFHES's third annual virtual teach-in, where she was interviewed by BFHES co-founder Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman; the homeschooling blog So Our Youth Aspire, recapping the interview, described her as “a Black homeschooling icon who homeschooled during a time when there weren't even half of the resources currently available for newly homeschooling families.”^[3]

Business career

In 1986, Penn-Nabrit founded PN&A, Inc., a business management consulting firm, initially in Jacksonville, Florida, as a research and information resource center for a range of organizations and industries; the firm later relocated with the family to Westerville, Ohio, where Penn-Nabrit continues to serve as its president.^[14][4] That same year, she joined the faculty of the University of North Florida as an adjunct professor teaching business law and ethics to MBA candidates, and after the family's return to Ohio in 1989 she taught business law, employment law, and business ethics as an adjunct at Franklin University.^[4] C. Madison Nabrit joined PN&A as head of marketing in 1991, and after his death in 2013 the Charles Madison Nabrit Memorial fund was established in his honor; the couple's sons have also worked with the firm in research, information-technology, marketing, and design roles.^[14][15]

Penn-Nabrit also founded Telos Training, Inc., a nonprofit organization focused on helping women identify and pursue what she describes as their telos, or ultimate purpose.^[16][6]

Other books

In addition to Morning by Morning, Penn-Nabrit is the author of SANKOFA: Look to Your Past Forgotten Heritage, described as a Christian rite of passage for African-American males, and Exploring a New Synthesis: Business Ethics & Diversity (An African-American Female Perspective in Essays and Cases).^[17] Her published works also include The Power of a Virtuous Woman and As For Me and My House, and a further volume, God and Greens, has been listed as forthcoming on her website.^[18]

Other work and public appearances

Penn-Nabrit has lectured on homeschooling, business ethics, and related subjects across the United States, Europe, and Asia.^[6] She has also taught Sunday school.^[6]

References