Working Wednesday: When Our Ancestors Show Up in Unexpected Ways

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy, Jr. was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. What does this have to do with the blog theme I’m posting under today, Working Wednesday? 

A memorial to President Kennedy in the 1963-64 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin, Georgia. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project.

Well, across the nation, millions of students sat in their school classes, oblivious to what had happened until someone broke the news to them. And in a classroom at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Spalding County, Georgia, the person who broke the news was my maternal 2x Great-Grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper's niece, Beuna Nell Crew.

Beuna Nell Crew in the 1963-64 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin Georgia. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project

How do we know that? Because in 2017, the Griffin African American Oral History Project interviewed siblings Cheryl Head Rashied and Raymond Head III. A recording of this interview and its transcript were placed online as part of a larger set of Oral History Collections held by the University of Georgia University Libraries.

Here’s what Ms. Rashied recalled:

“I think everything was all well in my world until maybe 1963, and that was the year that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And I can remember my biology teacher making that announcement to the class. And she came into the biology lab and said, "The President has been shot," and I thought this is the most terrible thing, how could the president of the United States be shot? And she was quite disturbed by this fact. And so I can remember quite distinctly walking home that day thinking that if this can happen, anything can happen, anything terrible. My world seemed to be changed in a sense. And maybe right about that time in 1963, we started to have this upheaval all across the country in terms of civil rights. But up until that time, my mother and my father -- I would say we were maybe sheltered from most of the woes of the world, and we had a happy childhood” [Time markers 00:04:00-00:09:00].

When the interviewer asked who the biology teacher was that Ms. Rashied had mentioned, she replied, “Ms. Crew…. Ms. Beula[sic] Crew, C-R-E-W. Yeah, she was the biology teacher.”

 *     *     *

What a powerful - and terrible and moving - memory to have. And how amazing that it 1) is connected to our ancestor, 2) was recorded and transcribed, and 3) has been made accessible to the public? I feel incredibly lucky to have come across it.

Photo Friday: Miss Crew, Master of Her Domain

Beuna Nell Crew, 1964-65 Fairmont H.S. Yearbook, Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin Spalding African American History Project.

Earlier this week I posted about my maternal relative Beuna Nell Crew, who taught at Fairmont High School in Griffin, Georgia for almost twenty years. Thanks to the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page, its founder Mike Kendall, and his work digitizing Fairmont’s yearbooks and other school material from 1948-49 through at least 1970, I have access to (and permission to use, within reason) a treasure trove of pictures illustrating Beuna’s time at the school.*

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew at Fairmont High School

(This looks like a long one, but there are lots of photos!)

Beuna Nell Crew was the daughter of my 2x Great-Grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper’s younger sister, Lula (Scott) Crew. She was a graduate of Spelman College, with a degree in Biology, and, like her mother – also a Spelman grad – she’d taken her education and decided to pour in back into her local communities as a teacher.

1959-60 Yearbook of Fairmont H.S., Griffin, GA. Courtesy of Mike Kendall and the Griffin-Spalding African American History Project Facebook page. (See Note Below.)

A Trip to the Archives: Researching Boggs Academy

What do you do when you find out that the records of a Georgia school that several of your maternal cousins attended are actually located in a building just a few minutes from where you go to work every day in Philadelphia?

 

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew at Monroe Colored H.S., A Postscript

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.

Working Wednesday: Beuna Nell Crew Becomes a Teacher

In mid-July of 1938, Beuna Nell Crew had just graduated from Spelman College with a degree in Biology. She had also just lost her father to tuberculosis a couple of weeks ago. Her brother, Lamar, had been married for a year and a half, and, with his wife Annie, had a son who had recently passed his first birthday. 

Schooling Sunday: Beuna Nell Crew, Second Gen Spelman Grad

On June 1^st, 1921, having recently recovered from a serious illness, my 2x great aunt Lula (Scott) Crew wrote in a letter to her alma mater, Spelman College, “I had no strength to speak of my little daughter of whom I have planned to enter Spelman as soon as she is old enough but my thots were of her.” 

Courtesy of Spelman College Archives.

Twelve years later, in 1933, her plans came to fruition. 

The Passing of Lula (Scott) Crew

In my last post, I mentioned that my 2x great-grandaunt, Lula (Scott) Crew - sister of my 2x-great grandmother Scoatney (Scott) Cooper - was an educator until her death in 1936. What I didn’t mention was that she actually died at work.

The Spelman Messenger, where I believe I first saw her death reported, gave no indication of how Lula had passed away. Instead, it focused on her contributions to not only their school community but also to the Georgia communities in which she had taught and served. “In the death of Mrs. Henry Crew (Lula Scott Crew),” they wrote, “at Lithonia, Georigia, on January 14, 1936, Spelman College has lost one of its most loyal and representative alumnae.” They continued:

Schooling Sunday: New Books on My Shelf!

I’ve added some books to my bookshelf, y’all!

 

My recent acquisitions.

To Spelman, With Love: A Lula Scott Crew Update

Fam, I’ve been holding out on you. I got something really, really cool – actually, something pretty darn amazing – in my email over a year ago, and I am only just getting to write about it. But now that I’ve had some brain space to pick up my research and writing again – taking vacation days is so necessary if you can, y’all! – I am so excited to loop you in. 

The Writing Lesson, by Morris Shulman. Citation Below.

 

The Education of Borden Scott: Graduating from Meharry

On March 20, 1908, The Nashville Globe wrote, “The invitations of the faculty and the graduating class of 1908 of Meharry Medical, Dental and Pharmaceutical College for the forty-second anniversary of the institution, are out to score of friends of the faculty and the students.”

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064259/1908-03-20/ed-1/seq-4/>

The Education of Borden Scott: Borden Goes to Tea

In my last post on Sydney Borden Scott, I ended on the question of whether or not he had any time for fun while studying at Meharry Medical College. Well, I’ll leave you all to answer that question with this fun little tidbit of social info from The Nashville Globe, published on January 3, 1908:

 

The Education of Borden Scott: Back to School, in Tennessee

On September 5, 1906, Sydney Borden Scott went back to school. He’d already graduated twice from Atlanta Baptist College, now Morehouse, in 1898 and 1901, then briefly spent time on the other side of the desk, as a principal and 3^rd and 4^th grade teacher at the East Athens School for “colored” children in East Athens, GA. Now, after a bit of time with the Isthmian (Panama) Canal Commission, he was hitting the books again. His goal: to become a doctor.

 

Listing for Meharry Medical College. American Medical Directory, 1906. Credit below.

 

Working Wednesday: At the Blackboard, Borden Scott

Sydney Borden Scott stepped into the world as a graduate of Atlanta Baptist College (now Morehouse) in the Spring of 1901. What came next? To be honest, I’m not quite sure. However, I do know what he’s up to just a little bit later, from the Fall of 1903 to the Spring of 1904: He’s teaching a gaggle of 3^rd and 4^th graders in Athens, Georgia. In fact, he’s not just teaching them, he’s also the Principal of their school!

Catalogue of Atlanta Baptist College, 1903-1904, showing Borden's current occupation as an alumni of the Academic Course class of 1898. He is also listed with the same info as a graduate of the College Course c/o 1901, but the info is broken across two lines. Accessed via Hathi Trust: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uiug.3011200458590

 

The Education of Lula A. Scott - Part 2

Once upon a time, in 1897, a woman named Lula A. Scott began her studies at Spelman Seminary. She was the younger half-sister of my 2x Great-Grandmother, Scoatney Scott. Perhaps she looked like, or was even one of, the young ladies in this photo, published in 1897.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. (1897). Students of Spelman Seminary, Atlanta, Ga. Retrieved from http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-7120-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

I ended my last post on Lula Scott’s education by asking if she’d made it through her studies, earning her degree. Well, good news: she did! 

The Education of Lula A. Scott - Part I

Sydney Borden Scott wasn’t the only one of my 2x Great-Grandmother’s siblings to receive a strong academic education. While Borden (as he called himself) was starting his fourth year in the Academic Course at Atlanta Baptist College, his sister Lula was beginning her first year at Spelman Seminary!

Lula Scott was born about 1882 in Georgia, likely in either Washington or Hancock Counties. She was about 2 years younger than Borden and about 22 years younger than Scoatney, her half-sister (they shared the same father, but had different mothers). And within just a few years of her brother starting his education in Atlanta, Lula followed in his footsteps.

The Education of Borden Scott: Atlanta Baptist College

Hey Cooper Cummings Family! If you attended our Virtual Family Reunion, you heard the 5-second synopsis of Sydney Borden Scott’s time at Atlanta Baptist College - this blog post fills in the details (as best I understand them).

Sydney Borden Scott, or Borden, as he seems to have preferred, was the younger half-brother of my 2x great-grandmother Scoatney Scott Cooper. She was born in the early years of the Civil War, he about 20 years later. Both seem to have been the children of cotton country, and of the people whose unpaid labor had made that crop so profitable. But whereas she remained in rural Georgia, marrying, having children and even owning land, he left on a path that took him through Atlanta, Georgia all the way to Chicago, Illinois, and to a career as a physician and postal clerk. She planted her roots more deeply, while he, in a sense, uprooted his. 

The Education of Borden Scott: What's In A Name?

Before I dig into Borden Scott’s time at Atlanta Baptist Seminary (which became Atlanta Baptist College while he was a student, and then Morehouse College later on), I have to address a bit of a mystery. Otherwise, it may seem like I’m playing fast and loose with the records!

I mentioned in an earlier blog post, almost as an aside, that Sydney Borden Scott seemed to prefer to go by his middle name, Borden, rather than his first. Both his World War I and II Draft Registration Cards, for which he would have provided the information, list him as “Borden Scott.” 

 

The Education of Borden Scott: A Prologue

Before Sydney Borden Scott was a 30-ish-year-old man graduating from the College of Physicians and Surgeons at the University of Illinois, he was a just a boy in Georgia. And somewhere around the age of 18, that boy graduated – for the first time – from what would later become Morehouse College. The year was 1898.

Here Comes the Graduate, Dr. Sydney Borden Scott

On the 20^th of June 1910, Volume 16, Number 6 of The Plexus reported on the 28^th Annual Commencement of the College of Physicians and Surgeons within the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois. Of the ceremony, which had taken place at the Studebaker Theatre on June 7^th, The Plexus wrote:

As the orchestra played Mendelssohn’s Grand March, ‘Athalie,’ the one hundred and thirty one graduates wearing caps and gowns, entered the left rear door of the main floor of the theatre and in solemn order, marched down the left aisle, taking their places in the middle block of seats.