Thomas Breen photo
Jeffie Frazier (right) at Thursday night’s hearing.
Alders unanimously supported renaming a Dixwell corner outside Wexler-Grant in honor of the school’s retried longtime principal and a nationally celebrated neighborhood educator.
That latest street corner renaming recommendation came Thursday night, when the alders on the City Services and Environmental Policy (CSEP) committee endorsed designating the entry to the Wexler-Grant School parking lot on Foote Street, across from Adam Clayton Powell Place, “Jeffie Frazier Way.”
The corner-renaming proposal, which had been drafted and submitted to the Board of Alders by Dixwell Alder Jeannette Morrison, now goes to the full board for a final vote.
Two dozen of Frazier’s former teachers, students, and sorority sisters filled the back rows of the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall to show their support for the corner renaming. They waved brightly colored signs that read “Jeffie Frazier Way” as the alders heard testimony about the lasting impact of the legendary teacher.
Khalilah Brown-Dean (left): “Nothing should come to a community unless it comes through a community.”
“There’s a passage that says, ‘You will know its tree by the fruit that it bears,’” said Khalilah Brown-Dean, associate professor of political science at Quinnipiac University. “And so tonight in this chamber, we have a sampling of the fruit that has been born from the tree that is Jeffie Frazier.”
A native of Minden, Louisiana, Frazier moved to New Haven in 1966, when she became a teacher at what was then called Helene W. Grant Elementary School on Goffe Street, according to Morrison’s write up in favor of the renaming.
“After long school days she found herself deeply involved in the Dixwell community,” Morrison wrote, “walking students home, visiting residents in the Elm Haven housing projects to see if families had enough to eat, and tutoring students who needed extra assistance.”
Frazier went on to become a Fulbright scholar, the principal at Grant School, and was recognized in 1996 as the Milken Educator of the Year.
“During her many decades as a distinguished educator,” Morrison continued, “Mrs. Frazier stressed high expectations and implemented numerous programs that emphasized community and parental commitment, including requiring parents to gain firsthand experience with their child’s daily activities and creating the Mentoring Program for Black Males to increase the involvement of fathers and provide students with male role models.”
Morrison said Thursday night that her own son, a former student at Wexler-Grant, benefited directly from Frazier’s commitment and care for the children in her school. Morrison’s son needed a lot of extra support and attention, she said, and, on a limited budget, Frazier always found a way to provide it.
Supporters cheer for the renaming of “Jeffie Frazier Way.”
Now, she said, her son has just graduated from Southern Connecticut State University, and will be attending a social work master’s program at UCONN next school year.
“This is just one of thousands of examples” of the lives Frazier has changed for the better, she said.
Frazier retired from Wexler-Grant in 2008. “She continues to volunteer at local schools and libraries,” Morrison wrote, “help educate parents in their duties at home and school, and work as a member of the local chapter of the Sickle Cell Disease Society of America to tutor kids with the disease.”