As San Diego schools’ first Black and first female leader, Bertha Pendleton showed ‘willingness to share with everybody’

Research material was scarce at the segregated library in rural 1940s Alabama, so the budding scholar found a novel way to access the information she craved. She convinced local officials to let her use the public library after closing time, when the young Black girl would be less subject to the vagaries of racial discrimination.

It was not the last time Bertha Pendleton would successfully navigate a world that did not always share her ambition.

The woman from Gadsden, Ala., became valedictorian of her high school graduating class and earned a degree in biology from Knoxville College in nearby Tennessee. But fate called her west, and by her mid-20s, the young educator packed up her husband and son and headed to San Diego.

“My family thought I was going to the end of the world,” she said years later.

Pendleton, who spent more than four decades serving the San Diego Unified School District, steadily climbing the ranks and becoming the first Black person and the first woman to lead what was then the eighth-largest school district in America, died this week in Las Vegas. She was 92.

“She mentored an awful lot of people without bragging about it and without anybody knowing that she was doing it, other than the person she was helping,” said Shirley Weber, the California secretary of state, who served on the school board that promoted Pendleton to superintendent.

Earlier this year, the district honored Pendleton by renaming a campus after the groundbreaking administrator.

“Bertha Pendleton created the space and opportunity for a young Latina girl who dreamed of being a schoolteacher to believe she too could one day lead this district,” Superintendent Fabi Bagula said at the unveiling of the marquee outside what is now Dr. Bertha O. Pendleton Elementary School in Rolando.

“I am proud that our community and district has chosen to honor Dr. Pendleton’s legacy by renaming this school in her honor,” Bagula said.

Trustee Sharon Whitehurst-Payne said Pendleton’s leadership style was to mentor people of all races.

“She kept her own in mind, but she also looked out for everybody,” said Whitehurst-Payne, who is also Black. “I think that people saw that in her, her willingness to share with everybody.”

Bertha Ousley Pendleton was born in 1932 and spent her earliest years in tiny Troy, Ala. When she was 5 years old, her family migrated north to Gadsden just before the birth of her cousin, the civil-rights icon and longtime U.S. Rep. John Lewis.

In Gadsden, Pendleton excelled in school, earning top grades and the respect of teachers and classmates alike. After graduating from college, Pendleton began her career as a cartographic engineer, designing and modifying maps at the dawn of the computer age.

She met and married former Negro Leagues ballplayer Oscar Pendleton and started a family.

But the classroom beckoned, and Pendleton turned to public education. She took a job teaching third grade in Chattanooga, Tenn., but soon learned that San Diego was recruiting teachers and made the decision to move to California.

Pendleton and her family arrived in a booming, postwar California in 1957, a time when San Diego — and the local school district — were largely conservative despite a growing Black community.

In her early years in San Diego, she began friendships with other families who attended the same church. The families would go to fundraisers and other events together, and all of their children came along, because nobody had babysitters.

“I think that’s one of the things that I really appreciated, because each one of us would take a month and serve (supper) and learn to play bridge,” Pendleton’s friend Ardelle Matthews said. “And eventually, we did.”

Pendleton spent a lot of time at the Christ United Presbyterian Church, where the Rev. George Walker Smith preached for many years. She sang in the choir as a soprano.

Carolyn Smith, the late preacher’s daughter, said her father — like Pendleton a Knoxville College graduate — was instrumental in recruiting Pendleton and other Black educators to teach in San Diego.

“He was a few years older, and she made sure everyone knew that,” she said.

Pendleton was active in the church, not only singing in the choir but also teaching Sunday school.

“She had a beautiful voice; I’m not sure many people knew that,” Smith said. “She was very strong in her faith. She just assisted all around.”

Mable Wigfall met Pendleton more than 60 years ago, and the two women were lifelong friends. They were members of the same sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, where Pendleton previously served as president of the San Diego chapter.

Pendleton always wanted things to be “top level” and was committed to helping both students and teachers, she said.

“She was just an outstanding educator and friend,” said Wigfall, who asked Pendleton to be godmother to her daughter, Torey. “And whatever she was a part of, she just did it in an excellent and outstanding manner.”

Torey Wigfall said her mother and godmother both relished the classroom, and she has early memories of the two friends teaching together. She said they also loved shopping and always looked forward to the end-of-the-month sales at the Broadway department store.

“They were both fashion icons,” she said.

Pendleton was soft-spoken, but people listened to what she had to say, Wigfall said. “She epitomized — what’s that, you know? — iron fist in a velvet glove,” she said.

Pendleton first went to work in San Diego teaching math at Memorial Junior High School in Logan Heights, and distinguished herself almost immediately.

Marjorie Golden, who attended one of her classes back in the 1960s, said her former teacher kept in touch with some of her students throughout their lives.

“She always wanted to know what we were doing, what we had achieved, but most of all, were we in a job that we loved doing,” Golden said. “She was interested in children’s well-being, and that was from a scholastic point of view to the human element of common sense.”

After several years in the classroom, Pendleton turned to administration.

She earned a master’s degree from the United States International University and later a doctorate from the University of San Diego. She became a school counselor, vice principal and principal, and eventually moved to the district office in Hillcrest.

In the 1970s, Pendleton was named director of compensatory education, meaning she was responsible for providing extra services and support to those students who needed help. Later, she was named an assistant superintendent and finally the top deputy to then-Superintendent Thomas Payzant.

When Payzant left San Diego Unified in 1993 to become an assistant secretary in the fledgling Clinton administration’s Department of Education, the school board bypassed a national search and quickly appointed Pendleton his successor.

She assumed the top post at a challenging time.

Former Trustee Edward Lopez remembered Pendleton as polished, exceedingly smart and always thoughtful of other people’s points of view.

“She was an excellent superintendent,” Lopez, who served two four-year terms ending in 2004, said Thursday. “She really put the interests of the students first and foremost.”

The so-called “reading wars” roiling public education in California in the early 1990s pitted the phonics method of relying on letter sounds in teaching young children how to read against the whole-language theory of focusing on the meaning of words.

The dispute affected educators and policymakers statewide — but Pendleton managed to take the best of both literacy methods and apply them to the 130,000-plus students then enrolled in San Diego schools, Lopez said.

“Bertha recognized that San Diego Unified could go back and do more with a phonics-based approach while still balancing out the latest research,” he said.

Mary Castlebury, who was a principal under Pendleton, said her superintendent helped her confront challenges as a fellow Black administrator. “If I had any questions, she had an open-door policy — I could call her, ask her questions, get advice,” she said.

Pendleton was in charge during a teachers strike that closed campuses across the city. Almost 6,000 teachers walked off the job in a dispute that pitted district officials offering pay raises of 11% against a union seeking 15% salary hikes over several years.

Many San Diego families and local employers were thrown into a lurch during the strike, which lasted just over one week in February 1996. The two sides settled on raises totaling 14.7% over three years.

At the same time, Pendleton is credited with overseeing notable growth in San Diego city schools, managing rising enrollment and the addition of 14 campuses during her five years as superintendent.

To Helen V. Griffith, the superintendent of The Preuss School UC San Diego, Pendleton’s legacy is breaking glass ceilings.

Griffith’s mother was both a teacher and principal under Pendleton. And Griffith herself worked as a substitute teacher hired by Pendleton and was assigned to a design team for one of the new schools.

“As African-American women, we have a concrete ceiling that we can’t even see yet,” Griffith said.

Pendleton was preceded in death by her husband, Oscar Pendleton, who died in 2020. She is survived by her son, Gregory Pendleton, and by a host of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other relatives. No information about services was immediately available.