Bertha Maxwell-Roddey, a retired educator who served as the 20th national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and was listed as a “founding mother” of the Harvey B. Gantt Center, died at her home in Charlotte. She was 93 years old.
Maxwell-Roddey’s death was announced Thursday by Elsie Cooke-Holmes, the sorority’s international president and board chair.
“Notably, during her tenure as National President, the Sorority partnered with Habitat for Humanity to address housing insecurity. Through this partnership, members of the Sorority help build over 350 homes for families in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa,” Cooke-Holmes said in a statement.
Dr. Herman Thomas, a retired professor of religious studies at UNC Charlotte, recalled working with Maxwell-Roddey in the 1970s in what was then the university’s Black Studies Program.
“She was a very articulate and informed person,” he said. “It was not hard for her to see the possibilities of education through Black Studies.”
Shortly after Maxwell-Roddey and fellow UNC Charlotte educator Mary T. Harper conceived the idea of a Black cultural center in Charlotte, Thomas said, they recruited him to help.
He said the idea was driven by “a new concept going at the time – experiential learning.” The co-founders, he said, wanted to create a community space that preserved and amplified Black culture.
“She expressed a need to get things done,” Thomas said of Maxwell-Roddey. “She helped define what Black Studies came to be.” He described her death as a “big loss.”
Also Read: Mary T. Harper, Gantt Center co-founder, dies at 84
Inside the Harper-Roddey Grand Lobby at the Gantt Center, a photo commemorates Maxwell-Roddey and Harper as “founding mothers” of the institution. The organization they co-founded in 1972 – the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Afro-American Cultural and Service Center – eventually became the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Art + Culture.
Bonita Buford, the Gantt Center’s president and CEO, released a statement saying the organization was “deeply saddened” by the death of Maxwell-Roddey.
“Her foresight and unwavering commitment to community is the very reason the Gantt Center exists today,” the statement said. “Our fifty-year evolution from an idea to an institution is among the legacy that she leaves.”
In the early years, the statement said, Maxwell-Roddey “guided the direction of the Center and supported us as a donor. As we grew, she continued to support us, both financially and through her influence nationwide.
Also read: Gantt Center honors its ‘founding mothers’
In retirement, Maxwell-Roddey continued her work amplifying Black culture, working with Historic Brattonsville in McConnells, S.C., to identify descendants of the former plantation that held enslaved people.
In 2017, Maxwell-Roddy attended an event that honored the legacy of African-Americans who were enslaved at Brattonsville, as well as their descendants, known today as the “Seven Sacred Families.”
According to Gantt Center history, Maxwell-Roddey worked for many years in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools as a classroom teacher, corrective reading teacher and principal, becoming the first Black administrator in a predominantly white school in North Carolina. She was also the founder and first Chair of the National Council for Black Studies.
Below, see our photo slideshow from the Gantt Center’s 2018 event honoring its “founding mothers,” Mary T. Harper and Bertha Maxwell-Roddey.
