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Though she tackled them more than 70 years ago—and at the age of 103, she admits her memory can be patchy—there are some social work cases involving children that Marguerite Chapman (PS ’45) can’t forget.

As perhaps one of the first African American women—and the only one in her class—to graduate from what was then Lewis Institute, one of the predecessors of ������ƵAPP, Chapman immediately went on to get a master’s degree in social work from Clark Atlanta University.

After graduating from Clark, the job of a social worker was the first one she’d ever had—and it would sustain a career working with children that lasted until her late 80s.

After a short stint working with the elderly to start her career, she focused on helping children—in particular, children placed in foster care in the city of Chicago.

“I had an opportunity to help children have a better life,” Chapman says.  

She remembers one young boy who had stopped showing up for school. Working for Chicago’s Children Services Division, she arrived at the boy’s home to find him in a room with no heat, just a diaper on, eating off a plate on the ground.  

She found him a new home and kept tabs on him. “He ended up being a genius,” Chapman says.  

When the child’s biological mother tried to get him back, Chapman remembers the meticulous notes she took making a difference in denying her.

“That shows you how records can change a person’s life. If you put everything in there and it ever goes to court, then it reflects on what you did at the time you moved him,” Chapman says.

Over time, Chapman gained a talent for working with children with neurological disorders. She remembers another child who was born blind—and whose parents didn’t want her. Chapman worked hard to find her not only a caring home, but also a tutor and a seeing eye dog, and kept tabs on her until she successfully entered college.

Another child, who’d witnessed his mother’s death, wouldn’t speak with anyone. Chapman bought toys for the boy and studied play therapy. After six months, they were able to communicate and he was able to relay what happened.

“I had a lot of interesting cases that the doctors referred to me because they could treat them medically, but they couldn’t figure out what was going on to stop them from functioning,” Chapman says.

She also attributes her success in social work to being curious about a broad range of challenges children might face.

“Let’s put it this way: You should know every area of social work. When you get the children, you get the parents, and you gotta work with the school. If you don’t, you can’t work with the child,” Chapman says. “You have to listen to what all the people are saying, and you have to learn your community, the schools, the stores. You have to know what’s going on.”

In the late 1950s, she was hired as a social worker by the University of ������ƵAPP’s pediatric neurology department, offering specialized lectures to students. She later went on to the University of California, Berkeley where, as a researcher, she helped organize the curriculum for an early childhood center in Oakland called the Institute of Training in Psychiatry. The added training and experience led to her becoming licensed in ������ƵAPP as a psychiatric social worker.

But she decided to go into teaching and worked as an elementary school teacher for Chicago Public Schools from 1972–1998. She was later picked by Northern ������ƵAPP University to utilize a grant to set up a reading program that trained teachers at a new, university-affiliated nursery school in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago.

Finally, when Chapman reached the age of 88, “We made her stop,” laughs her son, Warren Chapman.

Chapman’s family settled in Chicago after her grandfather, a minister, moved north from Birmingham, Alabama. He bought two buildings at Indiana Avenue and 38th Street, including the one that housed his church, Range Memorial Baptist at 3808 Indiana Avenue. All nine of his children graduated from college.  

As a child, Chapman played the church’s piano. She remembers her father being active in politics, accompanying him to political meetings. As a Republican who debated with his many Democrat friends, her father told her to not care what others thought of her—to just always try to fulfill her potential.

“Father said it does not matter—you be who you wanna be. I was the darker one in the family, but you can’t let color stand in your way,” she says.  “With God, you can do anything. Don’t come home and say they did this or that. My father said, ‘Look what they did to Jesus Christ. You think you’re better than him?’”

When she was very young, Chapman was afflicted with scarlet fever, and doctors told her family she likely wouldn’t live—or if she did, she’d be mentally challenged or lose the ability to walk.  

She remained unconscious in a Cook County hospital for a month before waking and recovering fully.  

“In my family, life was never, ‘I cannot do.’ You could say, ‘I don’t wanna do,’ or ‘I don’t like to do,’” Chapman says. “But I was never allowed to use ‘can’t.’” —Tad Vezner