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Honorable Soldiers, Too

Running head: POST-RECONSTRUCTION AFRICAN AMERICAN TEACHERS

Honorable Soldiers, Too:

Post-Reconstruction African American Female

Teachers of the UpperOhio RiverValley

Presented to:

Research on Women and Education 34th Annual Conference

November 6-8, 2008

Arlington, VA

Carole Wylie Hancock, Ph.D.

WashingtonStateCommunity College

710 Colegate Dr.

Marietta, Ohio, 45750

740-374-8716, ext 2113

Under the banner “The Army of Teachers” a January 13, 1906, Cleveland Journal article informed its readers that 13,300 of the 450,000 practicing teachers in the United States were “colored” women. These women constituted a full division within the forces of professional educators of the early twentieth century. A century later, few know about their lives, the battles they fought, or the deeds they routinely performed. The research on which this paper is based (Hancock, 2008) uncovered a direct connection between thislack of understanding and the lack of literature about female African American teachers. In order to partially rectify this situation, the researchilluminated the lives of Black women educators who taught in the Upper Ohio River Valley (Southwestern PA, Northern WV, and Southeast OH), a particularly neglected group (Hancock, 2008).

Due to limited attendance at the first carousel in The Gallery at the Research on Women and Education Annual Conference, the moderator merged three presentations, giving each presenter 20 minutes rather than one hour. This is a synopsis the material covered in the 28-page paper and 11-page photo essaygiven to the participants.

Census data and school board records, as well as newspaper articles such as the one cited above substantiate the fact that there were many African American teachers working in the United States during the post-Reconstruction Era (defined here as 1875-1915). An extensive literature review (Hancock, 2008) found the need for an exploratory and descriptive study to begin to fill a specific gap in that literature. Using the maximum-variation purposeful sampling method (Patton, 2002), six women from three locations were selected to be units of analysis in an historical, intrinsic, embedded case study that was bound by time, place, occupation, race, and gender. Research strategies included analyzing personal documents, U.S. Census data, newspaper articles, archival records, and artifacts. In addition, interviews with descendants were conducted to add to the richness of the data (the great grandson of Jennie Adams Carter was in attendance at the session). The result was a unique study that explored connections, similarities, and differences among women working within the designated bounded system.

The Teachers

The units of analysis for the case study included six women who taught for at least three years in the upper Ohio RiverValley. Four of the women (the first unit of analysis), Pocahontas Simmons Peyton, Susie Simmons (Jones?), Bernadine Peyton Sherman, and Mary Peyton Dyson, were from Parkersburg, West Virginia. The other two units of analysis were Anna Stevens Posey, who grew up and taught in Athens County, Ohio, and Elizabeth Jennie Adams Carter, who hailed from the Monongahela RiverValley south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Documentation for the factual material that follows can be found in the presenter’s dissertation of the same title (Hancock, 2008).

The Simmons/Peyton women were members of a family known for community activism and service. Robert Simmons, the patriarch, was the owner of a successful barbershop and one of six men who founded Parkersburg’s SumnerSchool. Organized in 1862, Sumner is considered the first public school for Blacks south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Each of the four women taught at Sumner, a school that remained segregated until 1954. Pocahontas, the oldest daughter of Robert and his wife, Susan, was one of Sumner’s first teachers. Her younger sister Susie taught at the school in 1887 when it was the first in the state to graduate an entire high-school class of Black students. Bernadine and Mary Peyton, daughters of Pocahontas,graduated from Sumnerin 1891 and 1899, respectively. Bernadine taught at Sumner until she married William Sherman in 1917. Records show that Bernadine earned a salary comparable to that of the White employees with similar years of service in the district. Mary, a 1908 graduate of StorerCollege in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, probablytaught at Sumner between her high school graduation and matriculation at Storer. She also taught on the East Coast between 1908 and her marriage in 1922 to Walter Dyson, a history professor at HowardUniversity. Mary stayed active in the life of Storer as an alumni organizer and later as a trustee.

Less than 50 miles from Parkersburg, integrated schools were common among the one-room school buildings of rural Athens County, Ohio. In the late 1870s and early 1880s, several of those schools employed a Black teacher, Angeline (“Anna”) Stevens. Born in 1862, Anna was the daughter of Aquilla, a laborer, and Eliza Brackston Stevens. It is not clear where Anna went to school or how much schooling she had. She did attend teacher institutes during the summer and was a highly sought after teacher in the area. In 1883, Anna married Cumberland Posey, who was an engineer on Ohio River boats and barges. He moved his bride to Munhall and later Homestead, Pennsylvania, where he parlayed his skills into a coal and shipping empire. Anna became involved in club and service activities while raising three children. An educator in the classroom and in the community for her entire adult life, Anna also instilled the importance of education in her children. Her son, Cumberland, Jr., a legend in Negro League baseball circles, attended several colleges in Pennsylvania, and her daughter, Beatrice, graduated from CaliforniaStateNormalCollege in 1906, a school with a tradition of educating African Americans. Its first African American graduate was the third unit of analysis.

Elizabeth Jennie Adams Carter, or Jennie, as she preferred to be called, was born on October 9, 1852. She grew up in the town of Monongahela City, Pennsylvania, where her father was a barber and circuit rider for the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. Jennie most likely attended the separate school for MonongahelaCity’s Black children. She began teaching as a teenager. It is not clear where Jennie taught before 1876, but records exist that place her as the teacher of the colored school in MonongahelaCityfrom 1876 until 1879.After the 1879 school year, Jennie enrolled at the South Western State Normal School (SWSNS) that was located about 10 miles from MonongahelaCity in California, Pennsylvania. She excelled as a student despite the fact that she was likely to have been the only African American on campus for at least the first term or two. When Jennie graduated from SWSNS in 1881 as the first Black, male or female, to graduate from the institution, many professors regarded her as an excellent public speaker. In addition, the school principal noted that she was “universally respected as a student and teacher” (“BlackCultureCenter,” 1986). Jennie taught for a few years at the Bridgeport (PA) ColoredSchool after graduation and moved on to PaulQuinnCollege near Waco, Texas, in 1884. While there, she reunited with and married A.M.E. minister John Nelson Carter, a former neighbor and fellow student at SWSNS.Jennie’s ill health brought the Carters back to Pennsylvania, where Jennie diedin 1891 at the age of 38. She left behind a husband, a daughter (who died the next year), and a son. She also left a lasting legacy at what is now California University of Pennsylvania (Cal U). Today on that campus, a huge five-story building bears her name, andbeginning in 2008 Cal U will celebrate October 9as Elizabeth Jennie Adams Carter Day.

Conclusions

Three themes emerged from the analysis of the data. They include community inconsistency in the way in which African Americans were viewed in all three locations, the realization that almost all of the previously existing knowledge about the six women was male-defined, and that there were multigenerational connections and successes among the women and their descendants. Many of the descendants of these six women have continued to build upon the commitment to education made by their ancestors and have flourished as a result. In addition, the collection of data and the analysis of these themes led to the formulation of 19 assertions. The assertions flowed from the analysis, were tied to the literature, and can be found in the dissertation on which this paper is based (

This research illuminated the educational experiences of unique women and it placed their stories in the scholarly record. The six women exhibited courage, dignity, and resourcefulness. They were leaders who built bridges in their communities. Each was an honorable soldier in the army of American educators of their day.

REFERENCES

Army of teachers. (1906, January 13). The Cleveland Journal, p.6.

BlackCultureCenter. (1986, September 5). The CaliforniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaCalifornia Times.

Hancock, C. W. (2008). Honorable soldiers, too: An historical case study of post-Reconstruction African American female teachers of the upper Ohio RiverValley. Dissertations Abstracts International, 69 (02), A. (UMI No. 3302718)

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage.