Marion William Anderson Biography Favorites Color Blue Food Roast Chicken & Fish Quote “The highest value of work is not that you earn but what you become.”

Master tailor and educator Marion William Anderson was born to Ethel and William Anderson—a beautician and presser respectively—on April 4, 1926 in Charleston, South Carolina. Anderson was encouraged to pursue a trade by his mother at Burke Industrial High School in Charleston. In 1947, after serving in the U.S. Army in Asia for a few months, he graduated from high school, majoring in tailoring. In 1949, Anderson moved to Harlem, New York in order to look for work. After a few jobs in industrial tailoring, Anderson pursued a teaching career.

After refining his skills at the American Gentleman School of Design, he started teaching at the Empire School of Design, a school that catered to black World War II veterans. In 1956, Anderson began instructing prisoners in the tailor shop on Rikers Island. Four years later, he convinced the New York City Board of Education to create a tailoring curriculum, and he was hired at Sterling High School in Brooklyn, where he would teach tailoring for thirty-three years.

In 1987, Anderson founded his own school, the Manhattanville Needle Trade School, in Harlem. In 2007, Anderson celebrated his twentieth year as the director at the school. During his lengthy career, he has tailored suits for many members of the Harlem elite, and taught a valuable trade to hundreds in Harlem and New York City.

Anderson was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on June 29, 2007.