William Thomas Fontaine

Philosopher, scholar, and educator

• Born: December 2, 1909
• Birthplace: Chester, Pennsylvania
• Died: December 29, 1968
• Place of death: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Fontaine was one of the first African American professors to gain tenure at an Ivy League university. As a philosopher, he was admired by students for his teaching style and recognized by peers for his contributions to understanding the racial difficulties facing African Americans.

Early Life

William Thomas Valerio Fontaine (fahn-TAYN) was the first son of William Charles Fontaine and Mary Elizabeth Boyer. His father was a laborer in the steel mills of the Delaware River, and his mother was a homemaker. Fontaine’s family attended St. Daniel’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Chester, Pennsylvania. Because of segregation, Fontaine attended the overcrowded Watts Grammar School, where all his teachers were African American. At the age of twelve, he matriculated at Chester High. While learning Latin in high school, he adopted the name Valerio, meaning mental strength or health. Fontaine excelled academically, played on the football team, participated in the Latin and debate clubs, and played violin in the school’s orchestra. He also cultivated broad literary interests by joining the Dunbar Literary Society. Later in his writings he made frequent references to the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar, an influential early African American poet.

Fontaine’s childhood unfolded in an environment of racial unrest. In July, 1917, for example, he witnessed race riots that included widespread looting, arson, property damage, and the violent killing of seven people. The Ku Klux Klan marched through the city of Chester in 1923, only a few blocks from the Fontaine home. He also was affected by the experience of World War II. Fontaine saw African Americans working at foundries manufacturing weapons and wounded African American soldiers returning from war. In 1926, he entered Lincoln University, a historically black college founded by white abolitionist Presbyterians, to pursue an undergraduate degree.

Fontaine’s parents died in the early 1930’s, and his aunt and uncle supported him financially in the early years of his undergraduate education. At Lincoln, he studied a classical curriculum that included Latin, ancient history, mathematics, philosophy, and natural science. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1930 with an emphasis in Latin and ancient history. Among Fontaine’s African American classmates and peers were writer Langston Hughes, politician Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Life’s Work

After graduating from Lincoln, Fontaine spent six years at Lincoln College teaching Latin, history, and government and created courses on African American history and contemporary international politics. While he was working and teaching, he earned a master of arts degree in philosophy (1932) at the University of Pennsylvania. Under the mentorship of Professor Edgar A. Singer, Fontaine was introduced to modern philosophy, including German idealism and American pragmatism. He was especially impressed by the philosophical works of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Fontaine sought to advance his philosophical training by taking a summer course at Harvard University in 1933. There, he came into contact with Clarence Irving Lewis, philosopher and founder of conceptual pragmatism. Fontaine subsequently relied on Lewis’s framework of moral decision making and its application to resolving practical problems. In 1936, he completed a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Fontaine taught philosophy and history at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, from 1936 to 1942. He married Willa Belle Hawkins in 1936. While teaching at Southern, he published the essay “The Mind and Thought of the Negro of the United States as Revealed in Imaginative Literature, 1876-1940,” which describes the intellectual and aesthetic evolution of African American thought and culture from Reconstruction to World War II. Fontaine returned to the University of Pennsylvania in 1943. A year later, he published “Social Determination in the Writings of American Negro Scholars” (1944), an essay that uses Marxist and pragmatist analysis to criticize the environmentalism of African American scholars in their study of race.

From 1944 through 1947, Fontaine was encamped at the Holabird Signal Depot in Baltimore, Maryland, where he taught African American military recruits. In a segregated military, he reached the rank of sergeant and provided vocational education to returning soldiers once World War II ended. In 1947 he was hired as the first African American philosopher at the University of Pennsylvania. He taught introductory philosophy courses and was greatly respected by students and his peers.

In 1949, Fontaine contracted tuberculosis, a particularly prevalent disease among African Americans at the time. He became an assistant professor in 1956 and was promoted to associate professorship in 1963. In 1967, he published the book Reflections on Segregation, Desegregation, Power, and Morals, a collection of previously published essays addressing the topic of segregation, double consciousness, and African American studies. Fontaine died in 1968 from complications of tuberculosis.

Significance

Fontaine demonstrated a deep commitment to teaching and was able to overcome personal hardship, prejudice, and institutional barriers in the predominantly white world of academia. He was mentored by prominent scholars in the leading universities of his time and trained in the canons of Western philosophy. He effectively used this knowledge in the analysis of racial issues and advanced the incipient area of African American studies. Fontaine embodied the virtues of scholar and activist through his involvement in cultural and political causes advocating for the rights and dignity of African Americans. In 1958, he was named Lecturer of the Year at the University of Pennsylvania, one of his many honors.

Bibliography

Fontaine, William. “The Mind and Thought of the Negro of the United States as Revealed in Imaginative Literature, 1876-1940.” Southern University Bulletin 28 (March, 1942): 5-50. This essay captures Fontaine’s understanding of the psychology and culture of the African American experience. It narrates the historical development of the African American mind and thought from 1876 through 1940.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Reflections on Segregation, Desegregation, Power, and Morals. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C Thomas, 1967. Fontaine addresses African American life and thought in the context of segregation. He uses some of the major themes in Western philosophy and engages in ethical and moral analysis of segregation.

Kuklick, Bruce. Black Philosopher, White Academy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. An excellent biography written by a former student of Fontaine at the University of Pennsylvania. Kuklick provides many details of Fontaine’s life and academic career.