Dorsey, Susan Miller

Louise Anderson Allen

When Susan Miller Dorsey (1857–1946) was named superintendent of Los Angeles City Schools in 1920, she joined Ella Flagg Young as one of the most successful women in the male-dominated profession of educational administration. The National Education Association recognized her as “the greatest administrative genius in the history of education” in 1929. Her rise to the top of her career was atypical for a woman as she moved through the ranks from classroom teacher to vice principal to the district assistant superintendent. Given her parents' encouragement of her intellectual curiosity, it is not surprising that she pursued education as a professional goal. But certainly her personal life was part of the impetus for it as well. Born in the Finger Lakes region of New York to a dairy farmer, James Miller, and his wife, Hannah Benedict, Dorsey was descended from English and Huguenot settlers. She attended public schools and then ...

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