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.

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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.