Hampton Man Comes to Grinnell

Collis Huntington Davis (1900-1974) was born in Hampton, Virginia in September 1900. His father worked as a plasterer and his oldest brother was already working as a hotel bellman when Collis joined the family, the sixth of eight children. Before coming to Grinnell in 1919 as the second Rosenwald Scholar, young Davis, who had graduated from Hampton Academy in 1918, had never lived outside Hampton, so the adventure of meeting the American prairie and a very white town no doubt brought many surprises. 

Collis H. Davis, 1924 Grinnell College Cyclone

When census officials came to Grinnell in 1920, Davis was living in college dormitories along with several other Blacks, including Hosea Campbell, the first Grinnell Rosenwald scholar who had arrived in 1918. Unlike Campbell, who favored history and philosophy, Davis majored in chemistry and zoology, and seems to have taken to his Grinnell classes immediately. A 1919 notice that appeared in Hampton's Southern Workman carried word that Davis was registered at Grinnell for a full load—16 hours—and "likes his work immensely" (48[1919]:671). That Davis enjoyed his studies is obvious from his academic success. A campus newspaper article from autumn 1921 included Davis among the 29 Grinnell students (out of college total of more than 600) whose grades the preceding year  qualified them as "Grinnell Scholars"— that is, they all "received at least twenty hours of A last year and none of their work was below B" (Scarlet and Black, October 1, 1921). Davis maintained this high level of success throughout his time at Grinnell as evidenced by his election to Phi Beta Kappa, the first African American to join Grinnell's PBK chapter (1925-26 Negro Yearbook, p. 300). I found little about how race influenced Davis's experience in Grinnell, but in a private email his daughter, Thulani Davis, recalled that her dad had worked as a Pullman porter during the summers while he was at Grinnell, and was "forced to sing spirituals every Friday night before being given dinner" (email February 3, 2022).

1924 Photograph of Collis Davis (front row, centre) and his six brothers
(Ancestry.com. McCammon Pautler Family Tree)

After graduation, Davis immediately returned to Virginia where he began teaching chemistry at Hampton Institute. The 1930 US census, conducted in April, reported that Davis was rooming on the Hampton campus with other men, but that September he married Willie Louise Barbour (1905-1955) in New York City. Collis and "Billie," who hailed from Kansas City, Missouri, had met in Boston when Collis took a summer class at Harvard and Billie was a student at Sargent Physical Education School. A talented woman in her own right, Billie later taught dance at Hampton, and became a very accomplished photographer.

A 1920s photo of "Billie" Barbour Davis (1905-1955)
(Ancestry.com, McCammon Pautler Family Tree)

Collis and Billie gave birth to a talented family. Georgia Louise (1932-2011) was the first African  American to attend Maine's Fryeburg Academy, and later attended Colby College and Columbia University. At various points in her life Louise, as she preferred to be called, authored newspaper columns on jazz and theater. Jennie Crosby Davis (b. 1934) also graduated from Colby College, later taking a master's degree from Hampton and an Ed. D. from Rutgers University. Collis Huntington, Jr. (b. 1942) attended the Stockbridge School in Massachusetts, then took a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin. After overseas duty with the U.S. Army, Collis, Jr. began a career in film and television, which he combined with teaching at several colleges and universities. Having developed a special interest in the Philippines as a result of Fulbright Fellowships, he settled there in 2001. Barbara Neal (later known as Thulani) was born in 1949; she graduated from the Putney School, then from Barnard. For some years she worked as a journalist in San Francisco, then moved to New York where she worked for Village Voice, all the while writing books and collaborating with other African American artists (https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/davisfamily). Clearly the Davis family was a highly educated and multi-talented group.

Undated photograph of Collis Davis, Sr. and his four children
(The Call and Post, June 4, 1992)

As his family grew, Collis, Sr. climbed the academic ladder at Hampton. Thanks to General Education Board Fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, he continued his chemistry education. The first fellowship, 1930-31, enabled him to obtain an MA from Columbia University in 1931. A second fellowship, 1939-40, allowed Davis to work toward a Ph.D. in organic chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he passed comprehensive examinations and two foreign language exams (Rockefeller Foundation, RG 10.2 [Fellowship Recorder Cards], Series GEB A-Z, Box 20 Davis-C), but circumstances conspired to prevent him from finishing his Ph.D. As Davis acknowledged in a 1939 letter to his undergraduate chemistry teacher at Grinnell, he was obliged to pursue his doctorate "in very piece-meal fashion as I now have a wife and two children to support...." Enumerating the multiple courses he taught at Hampton and the numbers of students, many of whom studied chemistry only as a sidelight to their work in agriculture, home economics or teacher education, Davis allowed that "we earn our salaries" (Alumni Letters to Chemistry Department, Pamphlet 51-51.3 C42a-51.3 C42a, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives).

Rockefeller Foundation, RG 10.2 (Fellowship Recorder Cards), Series GEB (A-Z), Box 20,
Davis, Collis Huntington—GEB-N

At Hampton Davis served, not only as a faculty member but also at different points in his career in numerous administrative positions—Director of General Studies, Dean of Students, and Registrar (Daily Press [Newport News, VA], November 28, 1974). 

Chicago Defender, August 3, 1946

Like most other American men of that time, Davis registered for the draft when the United States entered World War II. His February 1942 draft registration card describes him as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, and weighing 150 pounds. According to the registration official, Davis had brown eyes, black hair, and a "light" complexion. He was 41 years old, and had already taught at Hampton for almost twenty years. Later that year Collis, Jr. was born, and in 1949 the couple's fourth and last child, Barbara Neal (later Thulani), was born. Although busy, these were good years for Collis and his family. By the time Dwight Eisenhower became President, the older girls were either already in college or soon would be; Collis, Jr. was in grade school and Barbara was a toddler.

Undated photograph (1940s?) of Collis Davis, Sr.
(Ancestry.com, McCammon Pautler Family Tree)

Into this fairly tranquil life came a terrible shock: in December 1955 Billie suffered a coronary thrombosis. She was only 50 and excited about her photography which was attracting increasing attention, but within three days she was gone (Certificate of Death, Commonwealth of Virginia, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Registration District 2270, State File No. 27080, Registered No. 251). Georgia would have already graduated from Colby, and Jennie must have been a senior there, but Barbara was only six and Collis, Jr. just thirteen. I did not find any record of how Collis dealt with his wife's death, but it could not have been easy.

Undated Photograph (ca. 1939) of Billie Davis and daughters Louise and Jennie
(Alumni Letters to Chemistry Department, Pamphlet 51-51.3 C42a-51.3 C42a, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives)

In April 1960 Davis remarried, taking as his second wife Viola G. Palmer (1912-1991) in a ceremony in New Haven, Connecticut. Viola taught biology at Hampton, beginning in 1953, so she and Collis were colleagues in the sciences and must have known one another when Billie Davis died. Viola was twelve years younger than Collis but age difference seems insufficient to explain the brevity of this match: already in August 1961 they separated, and a year later formalized the divorce.

Abstract of 1962 Virginia Divorce Decree
(Ancestry.com; Virginia Divorce Records 1918-2014 [database on-line], Ancestry.com, Provo, UT, 2015)

In 1970 Davis accepted what proved to be his final position at Hampton, Administrative Assistant to the President; the following year he retired. "Students are what I enjoyed most during my 47 years as a faculty and staff member at Hampton Institute," he said. A published appreciation described him as "an alert and youthful person in thought and action," confirmed by his "youthful appearance, precise speech, and his forward look" (Chicago Defender, August 7, 1971). Confirmation of his classroom success came with winning the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award for 1969-70.

Newport News Daily Press, November 28, 1974

Sadly, retirement did not last long. In late November 1974 Davis entered Hampton Hospital, victim of a "cerebrovascular accident" that stemmed from "cerebrovascular disease." Within days he was dead. The funeral service convened November 30th in the Hampton Institute Memorial Chapel, fittingly capping Davis's half-century of service at Hampton. He was buried next to Billie in the Hampton University Cemetery.

Gravestone of Collis Huntington Davis and Louise Barbour Davis, Hampton University Cemetery
(https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14231128/louise-davis)

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Collis Davis began and ended his life at Hampton. He was a student at the Academy and he taught at the Institute (later University) for almost fifty years. He raised a family there and his remains were buried in the Hampton University Cemetery. Along the way Davis touched many lives, the influence of his intelligence and education radiating outward from the Hampton campus. He spent only four years at Grinnell, but, as his own letters confirm, they were important years and helped thrust him toward graduate education and studies at several Ivy League universities. It would be surprising if he did not encounter racial bias in central Iowa, but if he did, these ugly moments did not overwhelm the benefit that Julius Rosenwald and Grinnell College contributed to this remarkable man.

The First Rosenwald Scholar at Grinnell

In a previous post I told the story of how, beginning in 1918, the Rosenwald Fund, with the collaboration of Grinnell College, had underwritten the costs of four African American men to attend Grinnell. The "experiment," as documents called the plan, not only provided college educations to these men but also intended to determine if the presence of these men on campus "might have an effect in changing the attitude of the white students toward the Negro" (Anonymous, undated, untitled Summary of the Project, Julius Rosenwald Papers, Box 16, Folder 17, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago). This early effort at affirmative action seems not to have succeeded—at least that was the conclusion of the Trustees of the Rosenwald Fund. Consequently, the Fund declined to underwrite any more African American students admitted to Grinnell. 

But what about the young men who came to Grinnell with Rosenwald funding? How did their experience at Grinnell and their Grinnell education play out in the years after they left Iowa? Little has been written about these men, and I will therefore use the next several posts to tell their stories, one at a time. Unsurprisingly, their biographies follow unique arcs, some more successful than others. But their experience in the American heartland helped define their futures.

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Hosea Booker Campbell (1896-1975), who graduated from Grinnell College in 1922, was the first student to enroll at Grinnell College with financial support from the Rosenwald Fund. 

1922 Grinnell College Cyclone

Born in Quincy, Florida, the sixth of six children, Campbell came to Grinnell in 1918 not from Florida, but from Chicago, Illinois where he had been a student at Wendell Phillips High School (now Phillips Academy High School) (1922 Cyclone). A student at none of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities from which the Rosenwald Fund imagined most candidates would come, Campbell was a beneficiary of the Fund's trustees, who named him as the first Rosenwald scholar. Someone at his high school had warned officials that Campbell would do better to complete another year of high school before beginning college, but this advice, left in the margins of a document from the Rosenwald Fund, went unheeded.

Handwritten comment in margin of July 24, 1918 Letter from William C. Graves to President John H. T. Main (Julius Rosenwald Papers, Box 16, Folder 17, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago)

How Campbell came to live and go to school in Chicago I did not learn; Grinnell publications, like the College Catalog, regularly identified his home as Tallahassee, Florida, so perhaps his Chicago residence was temporary.

1918-1919 Grinnell College Catalog, p. 151

His 1918 registration for the military draft indicates that Campbell spent the summer of 1918 working at the Nash automobile factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin  (Ancestry.com. U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2005). But in September he arrived at Grinnell and took his place among the first-year students at the college. American entry into World War I and the establishment of the Student Army Training Corps on campus meant that very soon after arriving in Grinnell Campbell, like almost all the other 250 men on campus, enlisted in SATC. College dormitories were converted to "barracks" and the college curriculum underwent a similar alteration, the better to suit the country's military aims. So far as I could learn, Campbell had nothing to say about these changes.

1918-1919 Grinnell College Bulletin, p. 136

Perhaps it was for the best that SATC did not last long. With the announcement of armistice in November 1918, the urgency of training more American soldiers disappeared. The following month SATC at Grinnell was disbanded, and Campbell, after less than two months as a "student soldier," turned all his attention back to the more usual college curriculum. 

To judge from the few reports available, Campbell was a good, if not excellent, student. The 1922 Cyclone asserted that Campbell "studies very industriously, and is very well read," and that Campbell enjoyed conversations about history, philosophy, or literature. The word "industrious" often carries a negative valence; to work hard is not necessarily to work well, and it may be that the Cyclone intended exactly that distinction. When in 1920 President Main provided Rosenwald officials with brief reports on the progress of the Rosenwald-funded students at Grinnell, he could do no better than judge Campbell's work as "not discreditable." "His lowest grade...is 'D.' There is one 'C.' The other grades are 'A' and 'B,'" the President wrote (July 13, 1920 Letter of President Main to William C. Graves, Julius Rosenwald Papers).

Long after having left Grinnell, a fellow Rosenwald Scholar described Campbell as "aloof" and rarely involved in campus extracurriculars (Memorandum of Record, Telephone Interview with Gordon Kitchen '25, November 1982, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, Record Group 5, Series 2.1, sub-series 2, "Blacks at Grinnell," Box 5). Indeed, a search of the Scarlet and Black over the years of Campbell's attendance uncovered few mentions of him: in 1920 he competed in the Hyde Contest in public speaking and a few times he ran intramural track races, but nothing else made it onto the pages of the Scarlet and Black (April 1, 1920; April 28, 1920; May 29, 1920). Off-campus evidence established that in 1920 Campbell wrote W. E. B. Du Bois to solicit help in founding a chapter of the NAACP in Grinnell, although Campbell later dropped the plan, figuring that such a white campus was unlikely to yield many NAACP supporters (Outside In: African-Americans in Iowa, 1838-2000, eds. Bill Silag, et al. [Des Moines: Iowa State Historical Society, 2001], p. 333).

Grinnell College Bulletin, May 1923, p. 167

If not much involved in extracurricular activities, Campbell was nevertheless an able student, graduating from Grinnell in 1922, his academic record good enough to secure him admission to graduate study in history at Harvard University. Assisted by a $500 scholarship from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Campbell began graduate study at Harvard in 1922, working as a research assistant to Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), who had founded the academic study of African American history (Journal of Negro History 7[1922]:454). Asked to study Reconstruction in South Carolina as part of Woodson's big project on the history of Reconstruction, Campbell disappointed his mentor, who soon removed him from the team and cut off his funding (Jacqueline Goggin, Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History [1997, p. 68]; Patricia Watkins Romero, Carter G. Woodson: A Biography [Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1971], pp. 140-41).

1925-26 Harvard University Catalog, p. 160

After having received his MA, Campbell remained at Harvard, completing course work toward the PhD. But no later than 1927 he left Cambridge, and began a cycle of temporary stops that recurred often over the next few decades. In 1927-28 he lived in New York, where he told correspondents that he was trying to finish his degree. Soon thereafter, however, he moved to Wilberforce, Ohio where in Fall 1928 he assumed the position of Vice President and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (U. S. Department of Interior, 1929 Educational Directory, p. 73).

Pittsburgh Courier, September 22, 1928

How Campbell attracted such a position with his graduate study incomplete is unclear. Equally mysterious is why he left Wilberforce so quickly. The archivist at Wilberforce wrote me that an asterisk preceded Campbell's name in the university's annual bulletin, indicating that he had resigned before the document was printed (3 January 2022 email from Mackenzie Snare). Already by June 1929 Campbell was gone and his replacement named. 

The following year found Campbell in New Haven, Connecticut, but the record says little to explain what he was doing. When the 1932 academic year began Campbell moved to Oklahoma to teach history and head the Social Sciences Department at Langston University. Again, however, his appointment was brief, lasting only one year. As at Wilberforce, the circumstances of his departure are unclear. The Langston catalog mistakenly asserted that Campbell had obtained his PhD, an error that might have played a part in his brief sojourn in Oklahoma.

1932-33 Langston University Catalog, p. 6

Among the courses listed in the Langston catalog was one devoted to "The Negro in American History," a course for which Campbell's education had specially prepared him.

1932-33 Langston University Catalog, p. 41

It seems unlikely that Campbell had the chance to teach this course more than once before he left Oklahoma, returning to the East coast. 

Chicago Defender, October 17, 1931

Completion of doctoral work at Harvard increasingly occupied less of his energy than did his idea of founding a private academy for African Americans, something that seems to have occurred to Campbell early in his graduate study. No later than 1931 he was meeting with officials who might endorse or fund his plan. As the years passed, Campbell seems to have concentrated all his energy upon the idea, becoming correspondingly less committed to finishing his PhD. In late 1934 W. E. B. Du Bois wrote Harvard University, seeking confirmation that Campbell had in fact received his Ph.D. Assistant Dean Lawrence S. Mayo (1888-1947) wrote back in early January:

I have your letter of November 6 and am afraid you have been misinformed, if you believe that Hosea Booker Campbell has received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Harvard University. According to our records he has not yet fulfilled the requirements for the degree (Letter from Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences to W. E. B. Du Bois, November 8, 1935. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers [MS 312]. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries).

Perhaps Du Bois intended to print news of Campbell's doctorate in The Crisis, as he had published word of Campbell's bachelor's degree in 1923 (The Crisis, 26[1923]:108). If so, he was disappointed with the news from Harvard.

In his memoir John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), among the giants of African American history, reports having encountered Campbell at Harvard in 1935, describing him as a "sixth-year graduate student in history who spoke more frequently about his plans for a preparatory school for Negro boys than about the completion of his graduate studies" (John Hope Franklin, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin [NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005], p. 60). Campbell's hopes for obtaining the PhD seem to have faded, and hopes for an academic appointment faded with them.

Undated Photograph (1930s?) of John Hope Franklin
(https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/collections/creators/people/johnhopefranklin)

In 1935 Campbell returned to New Haven, where he worked for a time as a staff investigator for the Yale Institute of Human Relations, although whether the appointment was full-time seems doubtful. Newspaper reports from that year also place him in New York City, where Campbell taught a class on "Negro History" at St. Luke's Episcopal and also functioned as a Lay Reader (New York Age, January 12, 1935).

1936 Letter to Charles Houston

(Papers of the NAACP, Part 15: Segregation and Discrimination, Complaints and Responses, 1940-1955. Series A: Legal Department Files, Group II, Series B, Civil Rights. New Jersey, 1941-1948)

The year 1936 found Campbell back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but apparently without a job, as his April 3rd letter to Charles Houston (1895-1950) reveals him asking for help in securing a position at City College of New York, a plan that did not succeed. That same year Campbell sent letters to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Harold Ickes, seeking funds for a "private preparatory school for American colored youth." Campbell hoped to get a grant or loan from appropriations directed to the Public Works Administration, but a disappointing denial arrived within a week (National Archives, Department of the Interior [Record Group 48], Office File of Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of Interior, 1933-1942).

Over the next few years Campbell floated across the Northeast, without any steady employment and still seeking funding for the academy of which he had first dreamt in the 1920s. In 1938 he was living in New York City again, reporting to correspondents that he had acquired five houses in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem. His letter does not explain where the money came from, but does complain about all the troubles the properties had brought him, perhaps explaining how he had "lost some money" in 1940. Writing his friend, Julian Steele (1906-1970) in 1944, Campbell asked to have a 1933 loan renewed, promising to have money to repay the debt soon (June 16, 1944 letter to Julian D. Steele [Howard Gottlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University, Julian Steele Collection #727, Box 12C, General Correspondence, 4, 1940-44]).

Campbell's 1942 Draft Registration Card

(Ancestry.com. US World War I Draft Registration Cards 1917-1918 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, 2005)

When he registered for the World War II draft in 1942, Campbell was living in Elizabeth Union, New Jersey, working for the Packard Motor Car Company, a job unlikely to have depended upon his study of African American history. The local registrar reported him as 5 feet 8 inches tall, weighing 185 pounds, brown-eyed with black hair, his complexion "dark brown." Somewhere Campbell had picked up a scar on his right arm (ibid.). Late in the war Campbell's stationery identifies his home as Bridgeport, Connecticut; later he lived in East Norwalk. In none of these places did he find work commensurate with his education.

The lowest point in his career came in a Paterson, New Jersey courtroom in February 1956 when Campbell, then about 60 years old, pleaded no defense to a charge of fraud—"accused of converting to his own use a total of $5 from a Passaic housewife." A newspaper account alleged that Campbell "represented to her [that] he was soliciting subscriptions for the Periodical Publisher's Service Bureau of Newark and the Franklin Square Subscription Agency of Englewood." Before sentencing Campbell to the 81 days of jail he had already served (an indication that Campbell could not pay bail), Judge Donald G. Collester lectured the defendant, observing that "A man with your education shouldn't be getting mixed up with this type of thing...you ought to know better." Apparently a similar charge awaited Campbell in nearby Sussex County (The News [Paterson, NJ], February 13, 1956).

A brief note in the February 14, 1962 issue of the Long Branch, New Jersey Daily Record announced that Campbell, then about 65 years of age, was living in Long Branch, and had recently learned that he was appointed as a researcher for the Education Department of the WPA at Newark, focusing upon "special studies in the field of Negro history." The newspaper offered no details on the project or on the precise work in which Campbell would be engaged. The article concluded by mentioning Campbell's Grinnell degree, but erroneously credited him with a degree from Howard University (instead of Harvard), "where he majored in history." Although Campbell must have regarded the new position as better than selling magazines or working in an automobile factory, he could not help but notice that in old age he was replicating the sort of research assistance with which he had begun graduate study almost forty years earlier.

Death came to Hosea Campbell in June 1975 in East Orange, New Jersey (Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2014). What caused his death and where he was buried I could not learn. Despite my best efforts, I found no obituary. So far as I know, Campbell never married, never had any children, and left behind no record of publication—historical or political.

###

When Hosea Campbell graduated from Grinnell in 1922 and began graduate study at Harvard University, he seemed poised to join that first generation of African Americans who studied and taught the history of African Americans, correcting the inattention and imbalance that had long prevailed in US history books. Soon, however, Campbell's dream of a preparatory school for African American youth displaced all other ambitions, the doctoral degree at Harvard forgotten. America in the 1930s and 1940s—mired in Depression and then World War—was hardly a promising environment in which to seek financial support for founding such an institution, with the result that Campbell's dream was never actualized. During his last years, when his name rarely broke into the historical record, Campbell found himself not teaching "Negro history" at some college or university—not even at a church somewhere—but rather back at work in an automobile factory, just as he had done before he had ever enrolled at Grinnell College. Standing in a New Jersey court room, a sixty-year-old who had spent the previous three months in jail, Campbell had to endure the reproaches of a white judge, who told him, "you ought to know better."

Campbell's death brought no celebration of a life marked by achievement. There was no obituary littered with accomplishments, no institution to repeat and preserve his accomplishments, and no offspring to mourn his passing and preserve his memory. In this respect, Campbell's Grinnell education did little to differentiate him from most African American men who labored under the weight of racism. Hosea Campbell, once having earned special attention because of  his pioneering role as a Black man at very white Grinnell College, later drifted out of the historical narrative; not even the location of his grave earned a spot in the public record.

How Sears, Roebuck Helped Bring Black Men to Grinnell College...

 

If over the last several decades Sears has declined as an important player in America's consumer market, when Sears, Roebuck and Company was founded in the 1890s, like Amazon more recently, it pioneered shopping from home; instead of the internet, however, Sears customers relied upon the company's bulky, printed catalog to order all sorts of durables, groceries, and other consumables. 

Cover of 1897 Catalog of Sears, Roebuck & Company,
a 720-page doorstop republished by Skyhorse in 2018

The company's founders—Richard Warren Sears (1863-1914) and Alvin Curtis Roebuck (1864-1948)—were soon joined by Julius Rosenwald, who brought to the business "rational management philosophy and diversified product lines," with the result that business boomed: annual sales in 1907 amounted to more than $50 million—roughly $1.4 billion in today's dollars. By 1908, both Sears and Roebuck were gone; Rosenwald headed the thriving corporation by himself, serving as both CEO and president.

Undated photograph of Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932)
 (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c11719)

Rosenwald's success, not unlike that of Jeff Bezos more recently, made him a fabulously wealthy man. Happily for others less fortunate, Rosenwald also proved himself to be a generous philanthropist. Influenced by several of his friends, Rosenwald took a particular interest in African Americans, and came to be especially close to Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), through whose influence in 1912 Rosenwald joined the Board of Trustees of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University). Consequently, when Julius Rosenwald established the Rosenwald Fund in 1917, support for African Americans played a prominent part in the Fund's operation, over the years financing construction of some 5000 school buildings for African Americans in fifteen southern states. Rosenwald was also a significant donor to Howard University, Fisk University, and other Historically Black Colleges and Universities. And, beginning in 1928, the Rosenwald Foundation provided scholarships to more than 1000 African American artists and researchers. 

31st Annual Catalog of Tuskegee Institute (1911-1912)

Even before these grants began, however, Grinnell College entered into an arrangement with Julius Rosenwald, proposing that the recently-founded Rosenwald Fund help underwrite the education at Grinnell of several young African American men. So it was that some of the fantastic revenues at Sears, Roebuck and Company brought to Grinnell in the 1920s a handful of African American students at a time when the college was almost entirely white. 

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For reasons that I cannot explain, the Grinnell College archive preserves little evidence of this pathbreaking initiative. President Main's papers include no documents addressed to or received from Mr. Rosenwald or his personal secretary. Only two brief mentions in the Grinnell College Trustee Executive Committee Minutes reference the agreement, without attributing the idea to anyone.

However, correspondence within the Julius Rosenwald papers archived at the University of Chicago indicates that it was Grinnell College that initiated the plan "to provide scholarships for Colored boys in Grinnell," soliciting financial support from Rosenwald. A 1918 letter from Rosenwald's secretary summarizes the main founding events:

The correspondence of Grinnell College with Mr. Rosenwald's office about half scholarships for Colored boys in Grinnell was submitted to the Trustees of the Julius Rosenwald Fund at a meeting yesterday, July 23rd, and, by unanimous vote of the Trustees, it was decided to accept your proposition [emphasis mine—DK] to Mr. Rosenwald of April 27 and June 19, 1918, and restated in your letter addressed to Mr. Graves [Rosenwald's secretary—DK] under the date of July 11, 1918 (July 24, 1918 letter from William C. Graves to President Main, Julius Rosenwald Papers, Box 16, Folder 17, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago).

I have not found the Grinnell College letters referenced here, but if the claim is accurate, then sometime in the spring of 1918 someone in the Grinnell leadership hatched the idea of making a special effort to recruit—with Rosenwald financial support—African American men to attend Grinnell College. The spare language of the Grinnell College Trustees' Executive Committee Minutes provides no additional information, merely reporting that at its April 18, 1918 meeting,"On motion [the] President [is] authorized to negotiate with Julius Rosenwald of Chicago in regard to scholarship in the College for negro students from other countries [emphasis mine—DK] (Grinnell College Trustees, Executive Committee Minutes, 1911-1928, p. 352). That the plan aimed to import international students—visible nowhere in the documents I have studied—is mystifying, suggesting that Main might have misled the trustees.

Hosea Booker Campbell (1896-1975)
(1922 Grinnell College Cyclone)

The original plan called for the College to control the admission process, seeking promising candidates from places like Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and Tuskegee Institute. As many as three African American students were planned for 1918, but the lateness of the hour made that hope impractical. Consequently, the same letter that summarized the plan also nominated Hosea Booker Campbell (1896-1975) as the first Rosenwald-funded student at Grinnell. 

The Trustees [of the Rosenwald Fund] nominated as the candidate for admission to the College in September 1918...Hosea B. Campbell, c/o Y. M. C. A., 3703 Wabash Ave., Chicago (ibid.).

The college trustees seem to have understood the plan originally as a one-year experiment, which they renewed for another year in 1919: 

The President stated that Mr. Rosewald [sic] was anxious that the College allow the agreement, now in existence between itself and Mr. Rosenwald, covering attendance of three negro students at Grinnell to be in effect for the  year 1919-1920. It was moved by Mr. Pooley and seconded by Mr. Spaulding that the agreement be extended. Carried (Grinnell College Trustees, Executive Committee Minutes, 1911-1928, p. 362).

Surviving documents in the Rosenwald archive, however, indicate that from the beginning the plan imagined that Grinnell would admit more Blacks to Grinnell in each of the next four years, with the Rosenwald Fund providing half-scholarships and the College providing the other half. I found no record of a request for or the granting of a renewal in 1919.

Ibid.

The computation of costs included in the document seems to imagine no more than six students being admitted to Grinnell with Rosenwald Fund support. If three students were admitted in 1918, then the cost that year would total $750, as the table recognizes; if three more students were admitted in 1919, then the costs of both the returning students and those newly-admitted would total $1500, funding six students, which also corresponds with the table's data. Understanding the costs of the next three years proves more difficult, unless no new students were admitted. In that case, the same students who were funded in 1919-20 would continue to receive aid the next two years, each year at the same price (unless college costs rose). When the original three graduated in 1922, only the three men admitted in 1919 would remain to collect their scholarship for one final year before graduation in 1923. Reading the table this way means that the proposal would entail educating at Grinnell no more than six African American men between 1918 and 1923.

In fact, altogether the College did admit a total of six men under the Rosenwald plan, only not as the agreement anticipated. As already noted, only Campbell came in 1918; the following year, the college admitted two students, one of whom (Carl Saunders [1899- ], a Chicagoan) soon left; in 1920 again the college enrolled two African American men with Rosenwald funding, but only one survived into the next year (Nathaniel Miller [1892-1980], from Virginia, did not re-enroll). After some controversy with the Fund, the college admitted a single scholar in 1921. Consequently, all told only three Rosenwald scholars successfully navigated four years of a Grinnell education with full funding; the fourth man admitted in 1921 may have had Rosenwald support for only his final two years at Grinnell (see more below).

Undated Photograph of Hannibal Kershaw (1856-1883)
(Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives)

An undated summary of the project, which was composed for the Rosenwald Fund and retained in the Rosenwald papers, inaccurately reported that "There had never been any Negro students in the institution [Grinnell College—DK]" (ibid.). In fact, however, Iowa College (later known as Grinnell College) had enrolled several African American students in the nineteenth century, the first graduate—Hannibal Kershaw—taking his degree in 1879. Moreover, as recently as 1913 Grinnell had granted a diploma to James Owen Redmon (1889-1978), an African American who hailed from nearby Colfax, which was also the home of Leo Welker, an African American widely known as a successful bicyclist who graduated from Grinnell College in 1903 and went on to a career in medicine. 

February 10, 1978 obituary of James Owen Redmon
("Illinois, Mildred Hooper Obituary Collection, ca. 1959-1981," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2TX-2B2K : 1 November 2019), Mr James Redmon, 1978, ; citing private collection of Mildred Hooper, Nauvoo; FHL microfilm 1,639,121)

The author of the anonymous Rosenwald Fund memo, however, was oblivious of these facts, and seems to have viewed the college as forever white, describing the organizers' motive as an "experiment" to try to undo the white bias that prevailed on campus: 

There was a desire to try an experiment to see whether the introduction of a number of carefully chosen students of that race [i. e., African American—DK], of excellent character, might have an effect in changing the attitude of the white students toward the Negro (Anonymous, undated, untitled Summary of the Project, ibid.).

Alas, as Fund officials observed as early as 1921, the "experiment" did not achieve the desired result. A brief note that year from Rosenwald's secretary advised President Main "that the Julius Rosenwald Fund Trustees feel [that] the experiment of having colored students at Grinnell is not working out satisfactorily." Promising to continue funding for the three African American students then still enrolled at the college, Graves reported that the trustees intended to discontinue the plan, and urged Grinnell not to admit anyone new (July 14, 1921 letter from William Graves to Dr. Main, ibid.).

Undated photograph of John Hanson Thomas Main (1859-1931), Grinnell President 1906-31)
(https://dbcs.rutgers.edu/all-scholars/8904-main-john-hanson-thomas)

President Main's correspondence bears a very different valence. In a 1920 letter that preceded the Fund's declared intention of halting the project, Main allowed that, 

From the general point of view, the three men [funded by Rosenwald] have gotten along nicely. They have had no trouble in their association with the men. I believe I can say that there has been no discrimination shown. They have work to do and have had definite promise of work for the coming year. So far as their social relation to Grinnell is concerned, it is entirely satisfactory, and gives every promise of continuing so (July 13, 1920 letter from President J. H. T. Main to William C. Graves, ibid.).

As a result, the 1921 criticisms from the Fund caught Main off-guard. His early August 1921 reply to Graves took exception to the pessimism that Graves had voiced. 

Personally, I think, with the exception of Mr. Hosea Campbell, the men have been satisfied and reasonably happy. We have done our utmost to meet all the requirements of the situation, and I have given personal attention and consideration to practically all of the personal difficulties the colored students have had (August 2, 1921 Letter of John Hanson Thomas Main to William C. Graves, ibid.).

The Fund's analysis, however, was much more critical. Perhaps because of what the students themselves wrote to Rosenwald, the Fund's officials reported that Grinnell's African American students had encountered numerous difficulties.

At first there were slights, perhaps exaggerated by natural apprehension, Negroes being new both in college and in the community. Local barbers refused to give service. There were periods of lonesomeness and depression. The college representative who arranged the plan left the institution and no one seemed to take his place. Our general impression was that no one on the faculty took much interest in what was represented to us to be intended for a social experiment. There were social and scholastic adjustments necessary both with members of the faculty and with the student body (Anonymous, undated, untitled Summary of the Project, ibid.).

The Rosenwald papers include what appears to be an outline or sketch composed in preparation for the formal letter cited above. The two-page, handwritten memo is headed "Grinnell," and identifies six points. The first line takes direct aim at the entire idea and baldly states that "The experiment of trying to give whites a better idea of the Negro failed." Among the justifications noted here was the opinion that "the president [i.e., President Main—DK] was not much concerned" with the project and that "the one who had the thought [of initiating the plan] left Grinnell before the matter was tried out." In the margin a different hand has added "DeHaan," which seems to reference Arie Benjamin DeHaan (1884-1960), a 1906 graduate who had served as missionary in China. What role he may have had in the Rosenwald plan I do not know.

Undated Photograph of A. B. DeHaan
(https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8784347/arie-benjamin-dehaan)

A second point in the outline asserted that "The negroes were lonesome socially," because there was "no negro community in Grinnell town" and "race lines [were] drawn in town." Certainly Grinnell's African American population in 1918 was small, but Edith Renfrow Smith remembered that her parents often entertained the college's African Americans, not infrequently around the Sunday dinner table. 

...[The] Rosenwald Fellows [were] African American men [who] attended Grinnell from 1918-1921 with half-tuition scholarships provided by the Rosenwald Foundation and matched by the College. Mrs. Smith's family [the A. L. Renfrow family] hosted these scholars and served as the men's social center, and their presence in her home deepened her sense of connection to the College. "Of course since ours was the oldest family and since my sisters were older, that was their social life, and they came to the house on Sundays to play the piano and have dinner and what have you (Feven Getachew and Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, "Edith Renfrow Smith: Through the Eyes of a Pioneer").

The Fund's critique also claimed that "no one in college apparently except one professor [Edward Steiner?—DK] paid any attention to the boys with [the] idea of helping them." "Even Cosmopolitan Club," the hand-written outline continued, "containing brown and yellow men, barred" the Rosenwald Scholars from membership. Later reports from the men themselves undermine the claim that no faculty helped, and it is also unlikely that the Cosmopolitan Club prohibited Blacks from membership. Not long after this report was written Alphonse Heningburg, the third of Grinnell's Rosenwald Scholars, became a member of the club (which was also known as Cordes Fratres).

Scarlet and Black, October 20, 1923

On rather less evidence the memo maintained that, although the Grinnell Rosenwald scholars "got something out of it," they would have done better 

at Oberlin, Denison, Beloit, or other colleges where a) There have been colored students; b) There has been a sympathetic attitude toward them; c) They have been admitted to literary societies; and d) There are colored folk in town and some chance to be with boys and girls of their own kind (Anonymous, undated Note titled "Grinnell," Julius Rosenwald Papers, Box 16, Folder 17, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago).

The concluding point of the working outline proposed to "Continue [the] boys at Grinnell till graduation, but take on no new ones there." In other words, the Fund would let the Grinnell "experiment" play out, but refuse any future collaboration with Grinnell. 

The Fund's intelligence about how well the "experiment" was working at Grinnell must have come from the students themselves, although so far I have seen only one letter to Rosenwald on this subject. In a February 1921 letter, Hosea Campbell expressed skepticism about the project. "My Dear Mr. Rosenwald," Campbell wrote:

Since you told me to keep you informed about the welfare of the [Rosenwald] fellows out here, I am sorry to say that I am less optimistic about the success of the experiment now than hitherto. There has been a general depression of spirits among the fellows and I am not afraid to say that discouragement will likely affect them. ...I am merely venturing such a statement at present and will not agree until fully borne out by later developments. But I feel that I am only fair and obedient to you when I give what may be regarded as an honest tentative opinion. In the meantime, I shall strive to face whatever personal obstacles I may have and encourage the other fellows whenever necessary (February 3, 1921 letter of Hosea B. Campbell to Julius Rosenwald, ibid.).

Closing of February 3, 1921 Letter from Hosea B. Campbell to Julius Rosenwald (ibid.)

It may be that the other Rosenwald fellows conveyed similar sentiments to their benefactor, but it bears mentioning that Campbell, although the first, was apparently also the least accomplished of the four who graduated from Grinnell. Even before Campbell arrived, someone heard from his Chicago high school, suggesting that he would do well to spend another year in school before entering college.

.

Anonymous comment in the margin of July 24, 1918 letter of William C. Graves to President John H. T. Main (ibid,)

In a 1920 report to Rosenwald's secretary President Main himself pointed out that, although the other two Rosenwald scholars then on campus were doing very well, "the work of Hosea Campbell is not quite as good. His lowest grade...is 'D.' There is one 'C.' The other grades are 'A' and 'B.' His record is not discreditable," he concluded, but clearly Main thought less of Campbell than of his African American colleagues, both of whom (Collis Davis '23 and Alphonse Heningburg '24) later earned election to Phi Beta Kappa (Letter of President Main to William C. Graves, July 13, 1920, ibid.). Moreover, Gordon Kitchen '25, told David Jordan in a 1982 telephone interview that he thought that Campbell had had a more difficult time at Grinnell than the other Rosenwald fellows. Campbell was "a little aloof," Kitchen said; "he thought he wasn't accepted" (Memorandum of Record, Telephone Interview with Gordon Kitchen '25, November 1982, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, Record Group 5, Series 2.1, sub-series 2, "Blacks at Grinnell," Box 5).

Whether or not the Rosenwald Fund trustees had reliable intelligence on the students' experience at Grinnell, the program limped to a conclusion. Initially, Fund officers tried to dissuade the college from admitting Gordon Kitchen, nominated by Tuskegee Institute, to the class of 1925. However, as President Main noted in a September 1921 letter, "Gordon Kitchen is already in Grinnell and has registered for his work in the college" (The Case of Gordon Kitchen, ibid.). Bowing to the Fund's decision to abandon the project and Kitchen, Main wrote that "I personally shall take care of his interests. Of course I shall not call on the Julius Rosenwald Fund to assist in his case" (ibid.). Nevertheless, within a month the college treasurer dispatched a letter to Graves, listing Kitchen with the preceding three Rosenwald Scholars: "A check on account for these boys for the current year will be appreciated," Phelps wrote (October 3, 1921 Letter from Louis Phelps to William C. Graves, ibid.). A Fund executive wasted no time in replying: "This office has no record of Gordon Kitchen as a beneficiary of the Julius Rosenwald Fund" (Case of Gordon Kitchen," ibid.).

I found no evidence to prove that the Rosenwald Fund eventually contributed to Kitchen's college costs. It seems likely that at least in 1921 the Fund held to its decision, paying only for the first three scholars. Moreover, although in his 1982 interview with David Jordan, Kitchen reported himself as a Rosenwald Scholar, he also reported that 

he often worked for President Main, doing chores around the President's home...Kitchen also worked in the dining hall to supplement his income. He "cleaned up, mopped up," rather than serving tables or working during the eating hour itself (Memorandum of Record, Special Collections and Archive, Grinnell College).

Perhaps these jobs explain in part how President Main, without Rosenwald support, provided funding for Kitchen's education. However, there is some reason to think that Kitchen did receive Rosenwald support for his last two years at Grinnell. The Rosenwald archive contains a 1923 letter from Alphonse Heningburg, the third Rosenwald grantee at Grinnell, asking the Fund to assume Kitchen's scholarship for his final two years in place of Collis Davis's:

As Mr. Collis Davis graduates this term, I have been wondering whether you would consider giving to Kitchen for the next two years the money that had been given to Mr. Davis. Kitchen is working as much as he can, but is finding it almost impossible to keep up his accounts (April 10, 1923 Letter of A. Heningburg to F. W. Shepardson, ibid.).

Whether the Fund acceded to this request, I do not know, but the Fund's officials had to be impressed that Heningburg, reported to be doing very well at Grinnell, undertook to represent another student's interests. Whatever the fate of that request, Heningburg's letter implicitly confirms that Kitchen did not receive Rosenwald funding for the first two years of his Grinnell education.

###

A century afterward, the Rosenwald-funded "experiment" at Grinnell provokes wonder. Although the vocabulary of the correspondence reflects an acknowledged racial bias at the college, the idea itself seems to anticipate what a later generation would call affirmative action. After all, the project obliged Grinnell College to seek out potential African American students, and to that end President Main did write to several Historically Black Colleges and Universities, including both Hampton and Tuskegee, institutions that supplied three of the four Rosenwald Scholars who graduated from the college. The graduates' records confirm that they were very able students, but, given the rarity of Black men at Grinnell, it seems unlikely that Campbell, Davis, Heningburg and Kitchen would have enrolled at Grinnell without the college having sought them out.

As already noted, officials at the Rosenwald Fund deemed the project a failure. Certainly few African Americans followed these pioneers onto the Grinnell campus, and, so far as I know, for many years the college did not initiate any successor to the original plan; the campus remained very white. All the same, the men themselves seem to have seen the "experiment" differently. In a 1939 letter to his Grinnell chemistry professor, Collis Davis wrote affectionately of his experience at Grinnell. 

Your letter addressed to the men and women who have studied chemistry at Grinnell made me homesick...I have wished many times since I graduated that I could be back in my old stall in Blair Hall. I think of you often as one of the best friends that I had when I was a student there [at Grinnell] (Alumni Letters to Chemistry Department, Pamphlet 51-51.3 C42a-51.3 C42a, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives). 

David Jordan's report on his 1982 conversation with Gordon Kitchen leaves the impression that Kitchen's experience at Grinnell, despite everything, was "normal." 

[Kitchen] did not find adjustment to rural Iowa and a predominantly white campus too difficult...[he] fondly recalled Earl Strong [1885-1968] as a "special professor." Edward Steiner "was very helpful to all of us"...and "he did a splendid job"...Kitchen also recalled John Ryan [1877-1951], professor of speech and rhetoric, as "quite a friend" (Memorandum of Record).

Undated (1920?) Portrait of Edward Steiner (1866-1956)
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A18367)

Of course, comments like these do not erase or minimize the difficulties that the men faced on and off campus. Grinnell in the 1920s proved receptive to a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, which added substantially to the racial bias of the town. But certainly these remarks undermine the absoluteness of the Rosenwald Fund's 1921 conclusion that the project had been a failure. As the career arcs of the Rosenwald Scholars confirm, these were men who made a difference, and 1920s Grinnell helped them on that road. In the next several posts I will look more carefully at the lives these four men lived, once they left Grinnell.