I love a good postscript to a story, and thanks to local historian Steve Brown of the Monroe Museum in Monroe, Georgia, I’ve got one to add to the story of Beuna Nell Crew.
In my last post, I explored Beuna Nell Crew’s time at the Monroe Colored High School, where it is almost certain that she taught biology, the subject of the degree that she had just earned from Spelman College in the Spring of 1938.
After reading my post, Steve helpfully followed up with more information about one of the students at the school, whose name I had mentioned in passing: Eleanor Lutia Ison. What’s so special about Eleanor? Here’s the CliffsNotes version:
Eleanor graduated from Monroe Colored High School in 1944. She was 14 years old, and the valedictorian.
She went on to attend Spelman College, where she majored in Biology, minored in Chemistry, and was a member of the Biology Club. (She also somehow had time to be involved in student government, sing, play an instrument, and otherwise be very involved in her campus community!) She graduated magna cum laude in 1948 at the age of 18. Here’s her yearbook photo:
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| The Campus Mirror (Spelman College), 1 May 1948, p.10. Georgia Historic Newspapers, Digital Library of Georgia: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ |
And her yearbook listing:
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| The Campus Mirror (Spelman College), 1 May 1938, p.4. Georgia Historic Newspapers, Digital Library of Georgia: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ |
Perhaps unsurprisingly, she won an award for “proficiency in the sciences,” as you can see from this article published in the Savannah Tribune just after her graduation.
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| The Savannah Tribune, 1 July 1948, p.8. Georgia Historic Newspapers, Digital Library of Georgia: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ |
Eleanor returned to Spelman as an assistant in the Biology department before heading to the University of Wisconsin - Madison to continue her studies. Ultimately, she earned both a master's degree in zoology and a doctorate in physiology and endocrinology from that school.
Not only did she go on to teach pharmacology and physiology at Tuskegee Institute in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, she was then named an Associate Dean of Howard University’s College of Medicine, after having served as an assistant and then associate professor of physiology there for several years. She may have been the first woman anywhere in the U.S. to hold such a position.
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| Dr. Eleanor Lutia Ison Franklin (Courtesy of the Monroe Museum) |
Eleanor Lutia Ison Franklin was the author of numerous scholarly articles over her career and the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and other honors. The American Physiological Society even named an award after her: of the students who compete for a Porter Fellowship from the American Physiological Society, the student with the highest-ranked fellowship renewal application is named the Eleanor Ison Franklin Fellow in her honor. In an article written 30 years after her graduation, Spelman named her as one of their “Distinguished Alumnae.” Charles H. Epps’ 1984 book, African-American Medical Pioneers dedicates three pages to her, and she is listed is the 2013 edition of African American National Biography and Black Women Scientists in the United States, published in 1999.
Now, Eleanor was the daughter of two life-long and celebrated educators, Luther and Rose Ison. And she was clearly focused, determined, intelligent, and hard-working. But - and while I can't say this for certain - I don’t think it would be out of place at all to say that part of the spark that ignited or nurtured her love of the biological sciences came from the woman who almost certainly taught Eleanor biology when she attended the Monroe Colored High School in the early 1940s, our very own Beuna Nell Crew. As local historian Steve Brown said, “Undoubtedly, Beuna had some influence on this young lady.”
Shoutout to the teachers of the world, and what a lovely postscript to this part of Beuna’s story. It makes me wonder, did they keep in touch?
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Do you know anything about Beuna’s time at Monroe Colored High School, or her impact on other students? If so, drop me a note in the comment box below!
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