Jane R. Cosby, tireless education advocate and longtime Episcopal Church leader, has died at 95
She said she confronted hot-button issues head on as an adult partly because of the trauma, racism, and inequity she encountered as a child.
Jane R. Cosby, 95, of Philadelphia, a tireless education advocate and counselor, member of the Episcopal Church executive council, national representative for the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, two-time president of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians, civil rights pioneer, agile administrator, and Philadelphia’s first Black full-time court reporter, died Tuesday, May 13, of respiratory failure at Jefferson Einstein Philadelphia Hospital.
A lifelong resident of Germantown and aunt by marriage to actor Bill Cosby, Mrs. Cosby fashioned an eclectic and trailblazing career that spanned more than 70 years and featured innovative achievements in her workplace, church, school, and community at large.
She wanted to be a teacher when she was young. So she studied at Cheyney and Temple Universities and earned a master’s degree in education at Antioch University in Philadelphia in 1981.
She contracted with Hampton University in Virginia and other schools to mentor students of color as they entered the workplace. Later, she spent a decade training students in patient relations at what is now Temple University’s Lewis Katz School of Medicine.
She worked in federal government administration in the 1970s and later as director of human resources for United Engineers and Constructors Inc. In the 1950s, she trained at the old Philadelphia Stenotype Institute after high school and became the first Black full-time court reporter in Philadelphia.
For decades, she was a leader at all levels of the Episcopal Church and, as lay clergy, preached to congregations around the region. In a 2015 oral history profile by the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, she said she confronted hot-button issues head on as an adult partly because of the trauma, racism, and inequity she encountered as a child.
“My mother was a firebrand,” said her son Paul. “She put 135% into everything. She went in with both feet and both hands.”
At church, she decried the sex and financial scandals of the day, rallied for racial equality, and supported gay rights. She told The Inquirer in 1997: “Homosexuality is a fact of human existence. I think we should leave it to God to decide who is loved by God.”
She was two-time president of the Philadelphia chapter of the Union of Black Episcopalians in the early 2000s, a five-time national convention representative from the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, and a member of many national church committees. She served on the bishop’s staff for the Diocese of Pennsylvania, was a consultant to the bishop of Province No. 3, and active with the vestry, choir, stewardship team, evangelism committee, and other groups at St. Luke’s parish in Germantown.
She also attended St. Barnabas, St. Asaph, and St. Mary’s Episcopal Churches. She was recognized by many groups for her wide-ranging work and earned a bishop’s lifetime achievement award from the Diocese of Pennsylvania.
“She was the poster child for the three-legged stool of Anglicanism: scripture, reason, tradition,” colleagues at St. Mary’s said in a Facebook tribute. A colleague at the Union of Black Episcopalians called her “a pillar. Ever-present, ever ready, a woman of her word.”
After the Episcopal Church elected its first Black presiding bishop in 2015, she told the Washington Informer: “The fact that I’ve lived long enough to see a Black president of the United States and now a Black presiding bishop in the Episcopal Church, I’ve got nothing else to wish for. If I die tonight, it will be OK.”
In the 1960s and ‘70s, when her children were young, Mrs. Cosby invigorated several home and school associations. She spoke frequently at board of education meetings and other public events, and was quoted often in The Inquirer. She addressed integration, diversity, and equality, and especially zeroed in on improving the culture, curriculum, staffing, and space utilization in city schools.
She was on the school board’s Commission on Decentralization and Community Participation, the Germantown Community Council school committee, and the Pickett Middle School community committee.
In 1965, as president of the Lingelbach Home and School Association, she defended student busing as a necessary kick start to integration. In 1968, when Pickett Middle School was hiring a new principal, she set the bar high.
“We want someone who is secure, mature, and creative,” she told The Inquirer. “Actually, we want someone just a little under God.”
In the community, she energized the Black Economic Development Conference, Panel of Philadelphia Women, East Mount Airy Neighbors Organization, Ad Hoc Committee of West Philadelphia, and other activists. She was on the board at Mercy-Douglass Hospital in the 1960s and lobbied long and loud wherever she was for racial equality, improved housing, and responsible community development.
In 1965, when some neighbors complained that integration would ruin the schools, she told The Inquirer: “Of course this is ridiculous. It indicates a need of education for the parents.”
Jane Wycoff Royster was born Aug. 11, 1929, in Philadelphia. She talked in 2015 about the troubled times she experienced as a girl and the sacrifices her family made for her educational opportunities.
She also talked of the dances and other events she enjoyed at church. She overcame a bout of polio in her teens, graduated from Philadelphia High School for Girls, and studied chemistry and education for a time at Cheyney and Temple.
She met Thornhill Cosby at a Christmas party, and they married in 1951, and had sons Tyembe and Paul, and a daughter, Jane. They lived in West Oak Lane and Germantown.
For a time, in addition to her Episcopal church, Mrs. Cosby attended her husband’s church, Mount Zion Baptist, so they could worship and celebrate together. Her husband died in 2007.
She was a prolific storyteller and people person, and she never really retired. “Her drive was nonstop,” her son said. “She was an act of nature.”
In addition to her children, Mrs. Cosby is survived by five grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and other relatives. Two brothers died earlier.
Funeral services and a celebration of her life were held May 28.