Object Details
- Caption
- Cortez W. Peters, Sr. was the first African American to win and hold the title of the World’s Accuracy Typist upon winning the World’s Amateur Typing Contest in 1925.
- Born in 1906 in Baltimore, Maryland, Peters taught himself to type at the age of 11 after his father, a watchmaker, received a used typewriter as payment for his services. His self-taught style accounted for his unique typing methodology for developing accuracy and speed.
- In 1934 Peters, Sr. opened the Cortez Peters Business School in Washington, D.C. Over the next seven years two more locations opened, in Baltimore (1935) and Chicago (1941), and remained in operation until the mid-1970s. The schools were among the only privately owned African American schools in the nation, and were among the first to teach the professional skill or typing to a black audience. In addition to typing, the schools also taught shorthand and other clerical skills to help African Americans break into white collar professions. Eventually the school expanded to cover 22 subjects and taught an estimated 100,000 students across all three locations.
- Cortez W. Peters, Jr. helped his father run these institutions, eventually taking over after his father’s death in 1964. Peters, Jr. was an accomplished typist in his own right, winning several awards for both speed and accuracy. Together the pair honed and taught the Cortez Peters typing methodology in their schools and later through books and online. This method is knows as an “individual diagnostic/ prescriptive method” and focuses on identifying issues with an individual’s typing methods and developing personalized strategies to create new learned behaviors. This method is seen as the foundation of modern typing instruction.
- Description
- A book titled, The Cortez Peters Championship Typing Drills, written by Cortez Peters. The book is spiral bound along the top edge with a metal comb and the book opens vertically. The front cover is brown with the title printed in black and white text in varying fonts and sizes across the top that reads [THE / CORTEZ PETERS / CHAMPIONSHIP / TYPING / DRILLS / AN INDIVIDUALIZED DIAGNOSTIC/ /PRESCRIPTIVE METHOD / FOR DEVELOPING ACCURACY AND SPEED]. The white text, [CHAMPIONSHIP / TYPING / DRILLS ] is repeated and accentuated with a black text zoom effect. At the bottom center is the author’s name [PETERS] printed in black text. The back cover is brown. In the bottom right corner is the publisher’s name printed in black text that reads [GREGG]. Below is the publisher’s logo, a black box with brown text that reads [Mc / Graw / Hill]. Below the logo is a book number in black text that reads [0-07-049590-4]. The interior pages are white with black text, charts, and drills. Inside the front cover is a pencil inscription that reads [Property of: / Joanne P. King]. the book has forty-seven (47) pages plus ten (10) pages of publisher information, contents, title page, and a preface.
- Data Source
- National Museum of African American History and Culture
- Written by
- Cortez W. Peters Jr., American, 1925 - 1993
- Edited by
- Gertrude Delaney
- Published by
- McGraw-Hill Education, American, founded 1888
- Date
- 1979
- Credit Line
- Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Joanne Peters King and Darryl Wayne Joyce
- Medium
- ink on paper (fiber product) with metal
- Dimensions
- H x W x D (Closed): 11 1/4 × 8 11/16 × 3/8 in. (28.5 × 22 × 1 cm)
- H x W x D (Open): 22 3/16 × 8 11/16 × 3/8 in. (56.4 × 22 × 1 cm)
- Type
- textbooks
