Susan Duncan dies at 89; South Side educator and mother of former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan
Susan Duncan never met a child she couldn’t teach.
In 1961, she went to teach a Bible-study class to a group of 9-year-old children but discovered that none of them could read, her son Arne Duncan said.
That year she opened Sue Duncan Children’s Center, an after-school program to teach under-served kids on the South Side.
She and her husband, the late Starkey Duncan Jr., a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, raised three eventual educators themselves.
“We knew all our life that socioeconomic status or race, poverty or whatever was not the determinate,” Arne Duncan, former U.S. secretary of education in the Obama administration and former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, told the Sun-Times. “The determinate was opportunity, and I think we all, in various ways, tried to follow in her footsteps and create opportunity where it didn’t exist.”
Mrs. Duncan died Tuesday at age 89 following a long battle with dementia.
Her daughter, Sarah Duncan, told the Sun-Times that Mrs. Duncan had the tightest alignment between the values she professed and her lived life than anyone she had known. Mrs. Duncan never took a day off, and she was never paid for her work at the after-school program.
One thing Mrs. Duncan couldn’t tolerate, however, were the inequities she had seen in the education system for Black children during the Civil Rights era.
“There’s a lot of problems we can’t fix, but she could teach kids to read, and she got really good at it,” Sarah Duncan said.
“She really felt that education was a way to ameliorate the injustices in society,” she added. “She couldn’t stand that people didn’t have choices and chances, and opportunities, but she thought that education was the way.”
Mrs. Duncan was born Dec. 31, 1934, to Betsey and William Morton in Winchester, Massachusetts. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from Smith College in 1955, then a master’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin in 1957.
She moved to Chicago in 1959, where she taught English for one year at City Colleges of Chicago before opening her after-school program that went on to foster a family-like atmosphere and led countless children to becoming successful community leaders.
As a white woman in a predominantly Black community during the Civil Rights Movement, Mrs. Duncan wasn’t always welcomed in the area and sometimes received physical threats.
“She was tough as nails,” Sarah Duncan said. “And she just kept showing up and working with kids.”
Arne Duncan added: “She had tremendous courage. Over time, the community chose to absolutely not just embrace her but support her and protect her.”
Mrs. Duncan was known for always coming to the after-school program prepared with food — often apples, cheese and raisin bread.
But she also took time to care for her students’ other needs, “whether it’s washing clothes, providing rides, feeding kids – whatever it took to try and put them in position where they can be successful,” Arne Duncan said.
Sue Duncan’s Children’s Center, at Jackie Robinson Elementary School, 4225 S. Lake Park Ave., closed this year, announcing it wouldn’t return for the 2024-25 school year.
“The closing was voluntary, although bittersweet,” its website says. “We are proud of its longevity and amazing accomplishments. Thank you to every kind individual who helped the Center thrive over the years. We are deeply grateful.”
Mrs. Duncan is survived by her three children, Arne, Sarah and Owen, and nine grandchildren.
Services will be held from 10 to 11 a.m. on July 28 at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. South Shore Dr.