The Miss Porter's School Magazine, Spring 2022

Glenda Newell-Harris, M.D., was a child, she attended an all-Black segregated elementary school in Raleigh, North Carolina.At the Crosby-Garfield School, “I had all Black teachers, all Black classmates, and it was literally about two or three blocks from the high school where my parents taught, which was also a segregated school,” she said. “The teachers knew my parents stood for academic excellence, and so there was never an opportunity to slouch or not do your work or not show up.”

But when her parents moved the family to Winston- Salem in order to take faculty positions at the state university there, her world changed. After researching the local public schools, her mother enrolled her in a predominantly white middle school across town that had a reputation for excellence. “It wasn’t as traumatic as you might think,” Dr. Newell-Harris recalled, noting that she’d already left all her friends behind in Raleigh. “I just kind of went about my business of getting my work done, taking the classes that I needed to take, getting coaching from my mother, who always really encouraged me to stretch myself.”

Looking back, she credits her time at Miss Porter’s for giving her the interpersonal and leadership skills to have a successful career as an internal medicine physician, speaker, author and volunteer leader. The school “was a great platform, despite the fact that I was the only,” she said. “I was given that opportunity to engage in a way that just really helped me grow up and learn leadership.”