Breeden, James Pleasant, b.1934

Biography

James P. Breeden was born on Oct. 14, 1934, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1956, after which he attended Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1960. From 1960-1969, Breeden worked in several positions for the Episcopal Church, including as an advisor on civil rights, religion and race issues. His interest in civil rights activism began in 1961, when he was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi while seeking restaurant service in a local bus terminal. He worked with several civil rights organization and was part of the struggle over desegregation in the Boston Public School system when he became Executive Director for the Citywide Coordination Council in Boston in 1976.

In 1969, Breeden became an associate professor at the Harvard School of Education from which he also received a Doctorate in Education in 1972. Breeden stayed at Harvard until the late 1970s, although he took a sabbatical in 1973, to teach at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. From 1976-1978, he was an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and from 1978-1982, a senior officer in the Office of Planning and Policy in the Boston Public Schools. After a stint as the director of the Center for Law and Education in Cambridge in 1982, he was appointed Dean of the Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College in 1984.

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