The longtime Baltimore County educator who never stopped serving her community

Darlene Strickland White built her first house from the ground up in 1980 on a quiet street in Perry Hall. Unlike other homeowners on the block, she was single, Black and a woman.

Some neighbors doubted that an unmarried woman could maintain the place alone, said her daughter, Jessica White. White residents damaged her property. She faced racism from contractors who refused to do repairs on her house.

But she had never let others get in the way of her goals before, and she didn’t plan to start then.

White, who had already earned two teaching degrees by that point, stayed in the house for another 26 years. She raised her daughter there while volunteering for community groups and building a nearly five-decade career in Baltimore County schools.

She battled breast cancer three times and earned a doctorate while undergoing chemotherapy earlier this year. Even at the end, she would never give up on something she had committed to, loved ones said.

White, a business education teacher and longtime leader in the Greater Baltimore Section of the National Council of Negro Women, died July 12 at her home in Abingdon of breast cancer. She was 76.

“She literally dedicated her life in service until she physically could not do it anymore,” said Awanya Anglin-Brodie, president of the Greater Baltimore Section NCNW, where White had been a member for more than 20 years. “If that doesn’t say enough about her, nothing will.”

White was born Darlene Dianne Strickland on Sept. 10, 1949, in her grandmother’s home in Baltimore’s Mount Winans neighborhood. She was the second of five children. Her family later moved to Cherry Hill and the Perring Loch community in Northeast Baltimore, where they were the second Black family on their street, her family said in an obituary.

Her father insisted that all of his children pursue higher education. White enrolled at what was then Morgan State College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business education in 1972, excited by the idea of helping young people start their careers. She then earned a master’s degree in education with a concentration in psychology from the former Towson State University in 1979.

She began teaching the same year she earned her undergraduate degree and was one of few Black educators in the Baltimore County school system at the time, according to her family obituary.

Over the next 48 years, she taught at Overlea, Woodlawn, Dundalk and New Town high schools before finishing her career at Randallstown High School about six years ago.

Throughout her tenure, she chaired school business departments, ran a Future Business Leaders of America chapter and sponsored a step team.

“She loved her students and poured into them,” Jessica White said. “Every student was special to her.”

One of White’s former students once gave her a small teddy bear pendant for Christmas. She wore it every holiday season for years.

Her daughter made sure she was buried wearing it.

Though White was an educator, she never stopped learning. This spring, sometimes too sick from chemotherapy to sit through her own coursework, White earned a doctorate in urban educational leadership from her alma mater, Morgan State.

“I just started crying because I was so very proud of the work she put in,” her daughter said as she recalled White defending her dissertation. “She was fighting to complete it.”

Outside the classroom, White filled her calendar with service. She was a Girl Scout troop leader in Perring Loch, a member of the NAACP, and an active member of Jack and Jill of America’s Baltimore County chapter.

She joined the Greater Baltimore Section of the National Council of Negro Women in the early 2000s. She took on several leadership roles and organized major fundraisers.

Anglin-Brodie, one of White’s mentees who now leads the Greater Baltimore Section, said White ran meetings like she ran her classroom — by the book, and without patience for half-efforts.

“You just knew when Darlene was in charge of something, it was going to be done right,” Anglin-Brodie said. “She was not going to do it second fiddle, and mediocre was not in her vocabulary.”

Last September, at the chapter’s biggest annual fundraiser, White worked the room while checking on staff to ensure that they were filling out paperwork correctly.

“She never had the, ‘I am sick, woe is me,’” Anglin-Brodie said. “It was always, ‘The work has to get done. I’ll handle everything else later.’”

The chapter plans to honor White at its “Spirit of a Woman” event next March.

White was also a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority’s Baltimore Alumnae chapter for more than two decades. She served on committees spanning scholarship, economic development and social action.

But her proudest sorority moment came when her daughter also pledged Delta Sigma Theta in 2020.

“She was my role model,” said Jessica White, who cared for her mother in her final days at home. “Everything in my life, I basically modeled after her.”

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