The Final Rosenwald Scholar: Gordon Kitchen '25

Unlike the three young men who preceded him as Rosenwald Scholars at Grinnell, Gordon Kitchen '25 (1899-1991) was an athlete, and therefore brought to the college's football and track & field teams experience with racial difference. As noted in an earlier post, at the time he enrolled at Grinnell there was some question about whether the Rosenwald Fund, anxious to end its program at Grinnell, would help underwrite Kitchen's college expenses. Although Kitchen himself seems to have thought that Rosenwald helped fund him for all four years at Grinnell, it may be that he had Rosenwald money only his last two years. But however much Rosenwald contributed, Kitchen seems to have thrived at Grinnell and he later looked back at his college years with appreciation, a sentiment that the college returned by presenting Kitchen with an alumni award in 1965, forty years after his graduation. Today's post looks at Gordon Kitchen's Grinnell experience and where it led him in the years after Grinnell.

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1925 Grinnell College Cyclone

Gordon Henry Kitchen, the third of four children, was born in 1899 to Walter and Girlie Kitchen in Valdosta, Georgia, a town or small city in south central Georgia which in 1920 had a population of more than 10,000—about twice the size of 1920s Grinnell. Walter Kitchen had worked as a farm laborer and later worked in a dry goods store when Gordon attended grade school. After completing Valdosta High School, Gordon faked his age in order to enlist in the US Navy; World War I military records indicate that he signed up in late August 1918 and served aboard ship for more than a year before his 1919 discharge. He then enrolled at Tuskegee Institute (today's Tuskegee University) where, upon graduation, he was nominated to attend Grinnell under the Rosenwald Fund plan. 

World War I Military Service Record for Gordon Henry Kitchen

Following Hosea Campbell, Collis Davis and Alphonse Heningburg to campus, Kitchen benefitted from the experience and excellence that his fellow African Americans had accumulated in Grinnell. But whereas Davis and Heningburg were outstanding academics, Kitchen, a good student, excelled in athletics. A speedy halfback on the college football team and a track speedster, Kitchen, who was the single African American on the college teams, gained many campus admirers.

Photograph of Grinnell College Honor G Club
(1925 Grinnell College Cyclone)

Already in autumn 1922, the campus newspaper took note of his skill and speed, observing that Kitchen, then a second-year student, "won the right to play on varsity in the Coe game, when he was the only man who could gain consistently." The newspaper remarked that Kitchen "has plenty of speed and is a hard tackler" (Scarlet and Black, November 18, 1922).

1925 Grinnell College Cyclone

Kitchen also ran sprints for Grinnell in both the indoor and outdoor track season, getting his first athletic letter as a sophomore (Ames Evening Times, June 1, 1923). One measure of his athletic prowess was his photograph, alongside teammates Foster Rinefort '27, Gordon Meeter, and Olympic medalist, Morgan Taylor (1903-1975), in the Des Moines Register on the eve of the 1925 Drake Relays (Grinnell Herald, April 24, 1925).

Athletics was not his only interest, however.  A 1924 newspaper piece told of a Romance Language Club meeting at which "Gordon Kitchen read a paper on his recent trip to South America," perhaps a memento of his service in the US Navy (Scarlet and Black, March 5, 1924). In his final year on campus Kitchen served as Romance Language Club secretary (Scarlet and Black, October 1, 1924), and also took part in Cosmopolitan Club activities, in February 1925 reporting on his attendance at the national convention in Ames the preceding December (Scarlet and Black, February 21, 1925). At the Ames convention Kitchen was "the only Negro representative from foreign as well as American universities and colleges" (Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1927). I did not find any record of his impressions of the Cosmopolitan Club national convention, but a report relayed to club members at Indiana University offers one take of what Kitchen might have found there:

The spirit of the Convention was truly cosmopolitan...Everyone thought in terms of making our organization one for the brotherhood of man...Some of us just grew up as Cosmopolitans, while others of us have come to this country alone and have not found ourselves a part of the world until brought into contact with different peoples through the Cosmopolitan Clubs...we learn to judge a person not from the standpoint of nationality, but what kind of person is he? This helps to break down class distinctions and social prejudices (Indiana University Cosmo Reporter, February 4, 1925).

If these sentiments reached Kitchen, by then the only African American at Grinnell College, they might well have been powerful. According to the record of his 1982 interview, only once at Grinnell did he experience racism directly when he was refused participation in a track meet held at another college ("Memorandum of Record; Telephone Interview with Gordon Kitchen '25, November, 1982," Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives, Record Group S, Series 2.1, sub-series 2, "Blacks at Grinnell," Box 5). This limited recollection of racial slights may explain the enthusiasm with which he later remembered Grinnell. 

Like the men who had preceded him at Grinnell through the Rosenwald program, Kitchen also found time to speak with local groups. When he was a second-year student, for example, he and Alphonse Heningburg spoke at the Sunday evening service of the Grinnell Congregational Church. "Mr. Kitchen," the Grinnell Herald opined, "made a fine address on 'The Americanization of the Negro.'" The newspaper summarized Kitchen's talk:

As the negro was brought to this country in slavery and had worked in the building of the new country, the only country that he knew was America and the only flag which he had ever loved was the stars and stripes. As his loyalty had been proven in every war in which the United States had participated, Mr. Kitchen said that it was only fair that the Negro should be given equal protection with foreigners coming to this country—should have only what others wished for—liberty (Grinnell Herald, February 13, 1923).

1940s (?) Photograph of Interior of Grinnell Congregational Church
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell:13287)

Like Davis and Heningburg, Kitchen made friends within the small community of African Americans in town. Proof of the bond between the college men and Grinnell's own African Americans appears in the obituary of Ruth Lucas (1893-1923). In addition to two local men and along with a Jamaican college student, Sebert Dove (1895?-1948), Heningburg, Davis, and Kitchen served as pallbearers at the young woman's funeral (Grinnell Herald, February 20, 1923). Again, when Eliza Craig (1841-1924) died the following year, Kitchen, Heningburg, and Dove joined Eliza's sons-in-law as pallbearers, an indication of how closely the college men had been joined to Grinnell's tiny African American population (Grinnell Herald, June 10, 1924).

After graduation (which Du Bois reported in The Crisis 30[1925]:172), Kitchen accepted a position as director of the Frederick Douglass Community Center in Toledo, Ohio (Pittsburgh Courier, October 31, 1925). Historians think of the 1920s as the apogee of Toledo history. The city's port at that time serviced thousands of ships each year and Toledo's Willys Overland Automobile factory produced more cars than any other auto manufacturer of the time except Ford (Ted Long, "The Toledo Story"). This vibrant economic base attracted many African Americans, whose share of the city's population ballooned in the 'teens and 'twenties.

Fresh out of college and moving into such a vigorously growing world must have been exciting and Kitchen took to his duties with enthusiasm. Working with the Boy Scouts as well as with several youth athletic teams, Kitchen proved a busy and popular man. Both the "Kitchen Half-Pints" and the "All Stars," school-age basketball teams, had Kitchen as coach, as did the "Center Pets," the junior team of the Douglass Center  (Pittsburgh Courier, December 26, 1925; ibid., March 20, 1926; ibid., April 10, 1926). When baseball season arrived, Gordon Kitchen coached the Douglass Center team (ibid., August 7, 1926). Kitchen was also in demand as a speaker, appearing before numerous local organizations, including, for example, both the "Uplift Club" and the "Unity Club" over a short period in January 1925 (ibid., January 23, 1926).

As satisfying (and busy) as this work no doubt was, Kitchen had reason to seek a job in Des Moines. At the Drake Relays in spring 1922, Kitchen's first year at Grinnell, he had met Dorothy Hughes, a young woman from Des Moines. Interviewed about this moment sixty years later, Gordon recalled Dorothy as "just a beautiful woman." Dorothy, who was cheering on the runners that day in Drake Stadium, had a more specific memory: "He had a beautiful body," she told a reporter in 1983, describing the man who became her husband, "and he ran beautifully. He reminded me of the Greek runners in the Olympiad" (Myrna May, "Service Keeps Kitchens' Marriage Cooking," Columbus [GA] Ledger-Enquirer, June 2, 1983).

Yearbook and Official Rosters of Young Men's Christian Association for the year 1926-27, p. 72.

However, with Gordon busy at Grinnell ("He was really a serious student," Dorothy later said) and Dorothy enrolled that autumn at the National Recreation College in Chicago, not much happened between the couple. But when in summer 1926 Kitchen accepted the position as executive director of the Crocker Street YMCA (what was then called a "colored" YMCA) in Des Moines, his relationship with Dorothy bloomed. Hughes was, by all accounts, a popular and accomplished person (Chicago Defender, July 16, 1927), and appeared often at the Y, playing piano for the men's chorus of which her father was a member. In June 1927 she and Gordon married quietly at the parsonage of a Des Moines M. E. Church (Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1927). Their first child, Victoria Nan Kitchen, was born in Des Moines early in 1928 and a second child, Gordon Henry, Jr. (1929-2009), was born the following year. The Kitchen household, with two small children demanding attention, was no doubt a busy place.

The YMCA gave Kitchen plenty to do. A report out of New York to the various "colored" YMCA chapters announced that the Crocker Street YMCA had among its recent accomplishments the following: 

Ten juvenile court cases have been satisfactorily handled within the past six months...a boys' band, a senior and a junior glee club, a booster boys' club, and a live Bible class [have been organized]. Three sex hygiene meetings have been conducted with an attendance of 300 men and boys; nine young men have been led into the Christian life...five religious interviews have been held; employment service has been rendered thru [sic] the placing of ten men in good jobs; an athletic program...has been carried out to the delight and benefit of the boys ("Secretarial Newsletter" [Colored Work Department, National Council of Y.M.C.A., New York, NY] vol. 4, no. 9 [June 1927]:5, University of Minnesota Libraries, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, Speeches, Articles, Pamphlets, and Newsletters. Newsletters: Secretarial Letter, 1923-1927, Box 6, Folder 11). 

Over and above all this, one of Kitchen's more demanding duties was to organize each summer what newspapers called "the largest negro boys' camp in America" (Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, July 21, 1929), which convened in Boone for a week in August for several years in the late 1920s (Mason City Globe, July 20, 1929). Kitchen reported to headquarters in New York that the 1927 camp had attracted 93 African American boys, and was "the best ever" ("Secretarial Newsletter" [Colored Work Department, National Council of Y.M.C.A., New York, NY] vol. 4, no. 12 [September 1927]:2, University of Minnesota Libraries, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, Speeches, Articles, Pamphlets, and Newsletters. Newsletters: Secretarial Letter, 1923-1927, Box 6, Folder 11). In addition, as during his time in Toledo, Kitchen found himself often visiting and speaking before church and civic groups. Busy as his schedule was, it did not keep him from extending his reach further into the community, so that he also served as secretary to the local branch of the NAACP and as secretary-treasurer of the city's Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance (Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1927).

In 1931 Kitchen's career took a dramatic turn when he accepted a position in the physical education department of Talladega College, a small school about 100 miles west of Atlanta in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The oldest private Black college in Alabama, Talladega in the 1930s enrolled about 200 students in the college department, another 250 in the "Practice Schools" (teacher training), and perhaps 60 in the music department. These 500 students came mostly from Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina (1934 Catalog of Talladega College, p. 88). 

Photograph of Faculty Members of Talladega College, 1931;
Gordon Kitchen, front row, 4th from the right
(Chicago Defender, June 6, 1931)

At one time Talladega had been a football power within the Southern Intercollegiate Conference, accumulating championships twice in the early 1920s. Competition in the Conference was always spirited, and Tuskegee, for whom Kitchen himself had once played, had long held sway within the conference, but Kitchen oversaw the football and basketball programs at Talladega with considerable success. The 1934 Crimson Tornado football team, for example, was undefeated; at Talladega it was almost like the good old days. In the midst of all this activity on campus, Kitchen continued his education, earning an M.S. in Public Health and Recreation in 1940 from the University of Michigan.

Although the Kitchen family numbered four when they settled in Alabama, the fifth Kitchen joined them in late November 1932. Like her older sister and brother, Joy Adelyn was born in Des Moines's Mercy Hospital, Dorothy having returned to Des Moines and her parents' home before the baby's arrival. Although Gordon and Dorothy never moved back to Des Moines, the Iowa capital exerted continuing influence upon the family. Victoria, for instance, attended Drake University, graduating there in 1948. 

1935 Photograph of Gordon Kitchen Family, including (L-R) children Gordon II, Joy, and Victoria
(Kitchen Photos, 1931-1969, Lillian Voorhees Papers, Box 50, Folder 13, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University)

Meanwhile, forces far from Talladega, Alabama conspired to bring yet another dramatic change in Gordon Kitchen's life. With war already underway in several parts of the world and American participation in the war increasingly under discussion, in September 1941 Kitchen received an unexpected telephone call, as he himself reported:

September 27, 1941 as I sat at my desk where I was drawing up plans as Assistant Professor of Physical Education and Head Athletic Coach at Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama, I was paged to answer a long distance telephone call from New York City. On answering the telephone this is what I heard, "Kitchen, this is Hardy. Hardy of YMCA in New York. Today you were selected to go to Brownwood, Texas for USO-YMCA work. How 'bout it!" (Gordon H. Kitchen, "The History of the Cordell Street USO, Brownwood, Texas, Operated by the YMCA," University of Minnesota, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, Club Histories, Army-Navy Clubs, Brownwood, Texas [African American], 1941-1945, p. 14).

Within two weeks of having received telephone orders from New York, Gordon Kitchen arrived at Brownwood, a small city in central Texas, equidistant from Dallas and San Antonio. Today Brownwood counts about 20,000 residents, but the city was smaller in 1941 when the government began construction of Camp Bowie, which at its peak during World War II occupied about 123,000 acres and was home to some 60,000 soldiers. Although the camp was closed and disassembled after the war, during its heyday Camp Bowie exerted enormous influence on the local economy and society. 

Postcard Image of Brownwood, Texas USO (ca. 1940)
(https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:zk51vn24m)

Kitchen's duties in Brownwood focused upon African American soldiers, for whom separate USO facilities were built. In this as in so many things in mid-century America, "separate but equal" prevailed. As Kitchen reported in his 1945 summary, 

The Cordell Street USO is located in the very heart of the colored section of the City of Brownwood...The club is just a half block from the City Park for Negroes...The local Negro high school is just across the streets...and the four churches serving the Negro population are within two blocks of the USO...The main Negro business block is just about one and one-half blocks from the USO Club... (Kitchen, "History of the Cordell Street USO...," p. 27).

Unsurprisingly, race played an important part in the work that Kitchen did in Brownwood. The new director had hardly set up his office when a fight broke out after a civilian cop beat up an African American soldier. Some of the victim's pals came to his rescue, in the process taking the cop's gun and seriously injuring him. Called to the scene, Kitchen urged the soldiers to come to the USO where music and games helped calm tempers. Then the police, 

State Highwaymen, posses and just any one...began rounding up all the soldiers. The police took them from every place with guns in their backs with hands raised and a walk down to the local jail. The soldiers who had been in the Cordell Street USO all the evening were marched out with hands up (Kitchen, "History of the Cordell Street USO...," pp. 19-20)

Kitchen uses the incident to illustrate his decision to provide more recreation and entertainment for African American soldiers. He and his staff found a way to permit African American soldiers to come to town "by units, using their own transportation and using USO as...headquarters." Black MPs accompanied the units, and each soldier received a pass. This system seemed to work, and soon the USO was rocking on the weekends (ibid., p. 20). Later events at the center were routinely crowded, the facility gradually accumulating good will within the civilian community as well as among Black soldiers.

Letterhead of USO Club in Columbus, Georgia When Gordon Kitchen was Executive Director

In late August 1945 with the war ended, Kitchen resigned his post at Brownwood and accepted appointment as executive director of the USO in Columbus, Georgia, a town which straddles the state line with Alabama in west central Georgia. If today's population in Columbus is around 200,000, when Gordon Kitchen arrived the city was only about a quarter as large. Sitting on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, Columbus had long benefitted from processing the cotton grown throughout this part of the country. Slaves had been crucial to the old South's cotton economy, so it is no surprise that even today the city's population is almost 50% African American; it seems likely that the city's racial composition was not much different in 1945.

Like Brownwood, Columbus was adjacent to a huge Army base, in this case Fort Benning. Named for a former Confederate General like so many Army bases in the South, Fort Benning in 1940 occupied nearly 200,000 acres and accommodated almost 100,000 officers and soldiers. As everywhere in the US Army at the time, African American soldiers occupied separate quarters and populated separate units—"separate but equal"—but racial encounters were not rare. Not long before Kitchen's arrival, for example, the base had seen at least one lynching as well as the homicide of a black man whom a white soldier shot in the open on the base. 

As he wrote his friend and former colleague at Talladega, Lillian Voorhees (1896-1972), Kitchen came to Columbus in October 1945 alone, the family remaining in Texas to finish the school year. Dorothy was left to supervise things in Brownwood and organize the move to Columbus that came only in the spring of 1946 (February 18, 1946 Letter of Gordon Kitchen to Lillian Voorhees, Amistad Research Center, Collection 365 [Lillian W. Voorhees Papers, 1892-1973], Box 7, Folder 7). 

Photograph of Columbus, GA USO Professional Staff, 1945-49; Gordon Kitchen, 2nd from right
(University of Minnesota Library, Kautz Family YMCA)

Although by this time the war had ended, Kitchen found that many of his duties in Georgia differed little from those he had had in Texas. In particular, race remained a source of conflict, and Kitchen found himself intervening in cases that involved Black soldiers and white Columbus officials. In June 1947, for example, a local physician reported that a Black sergeant by the name of Raphael Shouell had been attacked and  brutally beaten by two Columbus policemen—W. P. Sapp and J. H. Hawkins. The War Department's "Memorandum for Record" noted that the report had received confirmation from "Gordon Kitchen, USO Director, Columbus, Georgia." Officials took testimony from three "negro" soldiers, two MPs, and one "civilian Negro"—presumably Kitchen. The two policemen concerned were suspended for fifteen days without pay," but this outcome could not have satisfied Kitchen or the other Black witnesses (African Americans in the Military, Part 2, Subject Files of Judge William Hastie, Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War [Bethesda, MD: UPA, 2008]).

Historical Marker for the razed Ninth Street YMCA
(https://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx)

Among the tasks in Columbus that were new to Kitchen was fund-raising. In 1953 both Gordon and Dorothy were involved in raising money for the "Negro Division, United Givers, Inc." (Atlanta Daily World, October 6, 1953). Numerous other efforts to raise money followed, but the biggest campaign to which Gordon directed his efforts was the YMCA drive for a new center in Columbus. The 9th Street YMCA was built in 1907, at the time being the first modern "colored" YMCA in the South. In its time it was a fine structure, but the subsequent fifty years had been hard on the building and therefore plans had been laid to raise money for a new facility.

1955 Photograph of Gordon Kitchen (left), E. E. Farley, and Dr. J. M. Grant at 9th Street YMCA
(Photo courtesy of The Columbus Museum, GA; General Acquisition Fund G.2020.49.2)

Gordon chaired the committee, kicking off the campaign in early spring 1959. In a letter to New York headquarters Kitchen reported that 

Negroes will oversubscribe their goal of $110,000.00 and [will] be matched almost three to one by our good friends of the White citizens. It is a glorious opportunity and I am humbly grateful that I was "drafted" to be a part of it. The folks are just fine in responding to the urgency (March 17, 1959 Letter of Gordon Kitchen to Louis Meillette, University of Minnesota Library, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, Administrative Files. Local Club Files. Columbus, GA. African American branch, 1949-1963, p. 5).

It took several years to collect the necessary funds and to build the new structure, but on May 6, 1962 a crowd of 2000 defied 98-degree heat to attend the dedication of the new Ninth Street Branch YMCA (Atlanta Daily World, May 10, 1962).

1959 Photograph of Kickoff of Fund Drive for New Negro YMCA (Gordon Kitchen, far right)
(Columbus Enquirer, March 12, 1959)

The success of the campaign brought many congratulations to Kitchen, but perhaps none so significant as his being named Columbus's 1961 "Man of the Year—Negro." A few years later his alma mater named him an Alumni Award Winner; the citation listed the details of his numerous civic contributions and ended by observing that, "With moral courage, great wisdom, and judicious strategy, he has moved toward the Christian objectives he set for himself, his people, and the entire community" ("Gordon Kitchen '25," Grinnell College Alumni Awards, Alumni Office, Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA).

June 5, 1965 Photograph of Frank Furbush '32, President of Grinnell College Alumni Association, presenting Alumni Award to Gordon Kitchen '25 (Grinnell College photo)

In 1965 Gordon retired from his work with the Y, and accepted a position as Assistant Public Affairs Director with WTVM, a Columbus area television station. But his involvement in the community continued. After passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Gordon joined an Advisory Bi-Racial Committee in Columbus, continuing his life-long interest in improving race relations in America ("Compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964," Civil Rights During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-1963, Part 2: The Papers of Burke Marshall, Asst. Attorney General for Civil Rights, Folder 001351-024-0001). In a 1970 letter to Lillian Voorhees he worried 

about what is happening "all over" but especially in our schools—both high [schools] and colleges. We have had a little trouble here, but we try to 'head off'¨ all indications of trouble; I have been meeting with different committees almost daily for the last two months. Thank God we are seeing a little light now (June 18, 1970 Letter of Gordon Kitchen to Lillian Voorhees, Amistad Research Center, Collection 365 [Lillian W. Voorhees Papers, 1892-1973], Box 13, Folder 5). 

As he explained to Voorhees, he had arranged for an anonymous gift of $100,000 which the government matched to provide employment for young people in the area. "We are trying to do things instead of meeting and talking the thing to an early demise," he wrote. Joining a special "Watch Dog Committee" in Columbus that met with the mayor, police chief and others "to assess any and all explosive potentials," Gordon wrote that he was "on call night and day for any 'actualities'" (ibid.).

Retired though he might be, Kitchen continued to volunteer and sat on numerous boards, among them the Red Cross, the American Cancer Society, USO-YMCA, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and a businessmen's prayer group. In 1967 he became the first African American appointed to the Muscogee County Jury Selection Committee (Columbus [GA] Ledger-Enquirer, April 5, 1967), and in 1975 he accepted appointment to the board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (Columbus [GA] Ledger-Enquirer, February 10, 1975). 

Living in Georgia and having taught at Talladega, Kitchen remained loyal to his own school, Tuskegee. In 1947, for instance, he was part of the group posing for a photograph to commemorate establishment of the Carver Memorial Scholarship at Tuskegee (Atlanta Daily World, September 12, 1947; New Journal and Guide, September 13, 1947). Moreover, for years Kitchen chaired the committee that sponsored the annual football game staged in Columbus between Tuskegee and Morehouse College (Pittsburgh Courier, October 31, 1964). This rivalry gained so much attention that it has even figured in the Congressional Record when in 2013 Congressman Sanford Bishop, Jr. delivered a speech on the House floor in honor of the game (vol. 159, issue 142, October 11, 2013).

New Officers of Georgia-Alabama Boy Scouts, Muscogee District; Gordon Kitchen seated (right)
(Columbus Enquirer, December 8, 1954)

In June 1983 the local newspaper published an affectionate appreciation of Mr. and Mrs. Kitchen who had celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary (Columbus [GA] Ledger-Enquirer, June 2, 1983). The article enumerated the many organizations that the couple had founded or served, including those to which Mrs. Kitchen, no less community-minded than her husband, had contributed. Dorothy had worked to establish a YWCA in Columbus, in 1947 had opened a ballet school for young blacks, and for some years read newspapers for the blind.

A few days after the newspaper article appeared, a "roast" of Gordon Kitchen took place at the Columbus Hilton. Representatives of various civic organizations articulated their "respect, adoration and love [for] ...this great man," a newspaper reported. The news also took note of and criticized the absence of local NAACP officials who found reason not to celebrate Kitchen's contributions (Columbus Times, June 15, 1983), although the paper did not explain what motivated the absence.

Program Cover for Funeral of Gordon Kitchen, August 7, 1991
(Courtesy of Tuskegee University Archives)

Gordon Kitchen died in Columbus August 1, 1991; his funeral took place a few days later at the St. James A. M. E. Church where Gordon had long worshipped and where he had fulfilled several leadership positions. His obituary enumerated the many organizations to which Gordon had contributed, and concluded by noting that Gordon had "led a life of service and Columbus, Georgia is a better place because of him."

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Gordon Kitchen lived his last several decades in Georgia, not far from Valdosta where he had been born 92 years earlier. All the same, he had traveled a long and difficult road, with important stops in Tuskegee, the US Navy, Grinnell, Toledo, Des Moines, Talladega, and Brownwood. A Black man in a land where race trumped most every other factor, Kitchen had struggled—often in the South where "separate but equal" so long dominated society—to bring fairness to men and women of color. As David Jordan noted in his 1982 interview with Kitchen, Gordon "carefully avoided any emphasis on blackness or racial separatism. He is a confirmed non-separatist...." To support the point, Jordan wrote that, among the moments at Grinnell he recalled, Kitchen paid special attention to the Cosmopolitan Club, which "sought to create better relationships between people of different backgrounds" (Jordan interview). By the time Kitchen died, plenty of difficulties remained between people of different backgrounds, but Gordon Kitchen had certainly worked hard to improve those relationships and make the world a better place.

Another Phi Beta Kappa via the Rosenwald Fund

1938 (?) Photograph of Alphonse Heningburg
(The George Washington University, Special Collections Research Center,  National Education Association Records-Special Collections [NEA1007], Box 3043, Folder 8)

Alphonse Heningburg (1902-1982) '24, the third Rosenwald scholar in 1920s Grinnell, was born in Whistler, Alabama, a small community northwest of Mobile. His parents, Andrew Heningburg (1860-1930) and Florence Ella Reves, had married in 1881, and a handful of children had followed: Janie; Clementine; Joseph; Benjamin; Mary; Andrew; Nathaniel; Amelier (?); and in 1902 Alphonse. 

1881 Certificate of Marriage for Andrew Heningburg and Florence Ella Reves
(Ancestry.com. Alabama, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1805-1967 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016)

But when Alphonse was only four years old, his mother, Florence Ella Heningburg (1865-1906), who was only 40 or 41 herself, died quite suddenly. With toddler Alphonse still under foot, her death must have traumatized the household. Evidence for having rearranged the family comes from the 1910 US Census which found Alphonse, then eight years old, living in a Mobile household headed not by his widowed father, but by his older brother, Joseph, then 24 years old and working as a brick mason; a widowed sister (26) and two other brothers were the only other members of the household. The children's father, Andrew Heningburg, seems not to have died until 1930, so why the children were living together without their father in 1910 I do not know. In a 1933 essay Heningburg reported that his father had been a "fairly successful contractor, although his school work had not extended beyond the third grade" (Alphonse Heningburg, "The Relation of Tuskegee Institute to Education in the Lower South," Journal of Educational Sociology v. 7, n. 3 [November 1933]:160). Early census reports describe him as a brick mason or laborer, but I could find little else about the man.

Extract from 1910 US Census for Carvers Precinct #8, Mobile, AL

Alphonse evidently did his primary schooling in Whistler, but in 1916 he enrolled at Tuskegee Institute, which, under the influence of Booker T. Washington, had organized its curriculum to emphasize trade skills in addition to a more conventional curriculum (Heningburg, "The Relation of Tuskegee Institute to Education," pp. 159-62). As the catalog points out, 

Tuskegee Institute aims to provide an opportunity for young colored men and women to acquire a sound vocational training so that upon graduation they may be thoroughly equipped for active leadership in improving moral, educational, industrial and civic conditions in the communities in which they may thereafter live...The more or less abstract teaching of the classroom is supplemented and illustrated by practical lessons in field and shop (1920-1921 Catalog of Tuskegee Institute, pp. 14-15). 

Consequently, it was at Tuskegee that Alphonse began his life-long love of and skill at woodworking.

Extract from1920-1921 Catalog of Tuskegee Institute, p. 27

Heningburg graduated from Tuskegee in 1919, winning the Sumner Prize for his essay on peace and the Frye Prize, which was "awarded to the student...who makes the  most progress in his or her trade and at the same time makes the best record in academic studies" (39th Annual Catalog of Tuskegee Institute 1919-1920, pp. 137-38). Unsurprisingly, Heningburg completed Tuskegee as valedictorian of his graduating class of which he was also vice president (1924 Cyclone; Afro-American, August 22, 1931). In brief, his Tuskegee record was outstanding.

Heningburg also did well at Grinnell, although his arrival brought him face to face with racial bias. In an essay he wrote many years after leaving Iowa he recalled his first attempt to get a haircut in town:

The shop was clean and attractive, and the barber at the first chair looked up with a cheerful "Good morning" as I entered. I sat for a few minutes waiting my turn and continued to read a Spanish play which was one of my assignments for the afternoon. The barber whose customer I became was evidently of Spanish descent, for after having noted the book I was studying, his "Buenos dias, señor" greeted me cordially as I took my seat in his chair. An air of friendliness developed and we talked about some of the better-known Spanish writers and artists...The discussion turned in my general direction after a while, and I mentioned casually that I was perhaps the first Negro student to attend the college. My glance into the mirror caught his expression of surprise and bewilderment.With hands raised above his head and in a tone of incredulity, he demanded: "You mean to tell me you're a Negro!" I admitted that I was. "Why I can't cut your hair!" he gasped....I finally persuaded him to finish the job, but he did it with much reluctance and with a great show of effort. He knew the temper of the community; he was probably in danger of losing his job if it became known that he had trimmed a Negro's hair...I was a Negro and, as such, immediately lost claim on the hospitality of the community (Alphonse Heningburg, "Two Worlds," Common Ground 49[1944]:46).

1919 Photograph of a Grinnell Barbershop in the 900 Block of Main Street
https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell:6152

Unfortunately, Heningburg reports that he encountered the same racial attitudes on campus, as he illustrated with another anecdote. Heningburg tells of an in-class assignment (from an instructor he does not name, but who might have been Edward Steiner [1866-1956]) requiring students to "tell how they felt when the word 'Negro' was mentioned...." No names were required, but the instructor asked students to reply "as clearly and as concisely as you can the kind of thoughts you have when you hear the word 'Negro.'" Heningburg then recalled, as well as his memory would allow twenty-some years later, the exact words of his fellow students.

"When I hear the word 'Negro,' I feel a strange kind of resentment, and I think about things which are not pleasant." "The very mention of the word 'Negro' makes me see red, for I think of all the problems which the people in my part of the country face because we have to put up with these people." "Negroes are an awful nuisance in my community—at least all those that I have known. It would be a great thing if all of them could go back to Africa" (ibid., p. 47).

Alluding to his fellow students, Heningburg ruefully recalled that "There was hardly a one who seemed to think about Negroes as if they were [people] much like themselves" (ibid.).

One may wonder how faithfully Heningburg could recall these statements decades later. As scholars have noted, memories—even terrible memories—are fungible and can be reconstructed over time (Randy Rieland, "What Scientists Know About Repairing Memories," https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/what-scientists-now-know-about-repairing-memories-1566240/). Moreover, because Heningburg begins his recollection by describing Grinnell as "the small northwestern town in which I went to college," it is tempting to question the accuracy of the statements he recalls. But even if the literal accuracy of the quotations be questioned, it is much harder to doubt that Heningburg has remembered accurately the sense of these comments, whose vocabulary and tone call to mind the 1921 Rosenwald Fund summary of the students' experience at Grinnell:

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 social and scholastic adjustments necessary both with members of the faculty and with the student body (Anonymous, undated, untitled Summary of the Project, Julius Rosenwald Papers, Box 16, Folder 17, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago).

Nevertheless, Heningburg remained in college and succeeded brilliantly at Grinnell. Majoring in Spanish which he combined with courses in Business Administration, he did well enough to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa (Scarlet and Black, May 21, 1924). He was also a member of the Cosmopolitan Club (ibid., October 20, 1923) and the Romance Language Club of which he was treasurer (ibid., April 30, 1924) and one of its few male members.

Romance Language Club, 1924 Grinnell College Cyclone

After Grinnell Heningburg accepted a position at the Slater State Normal School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (Southern Workman, 1924, p. 325), soon renamed Winston-Salem State University. Archivists there could not give me evidence of his assignments at Winston-Salem, but his tenure there could only have been brief anyway, because he was soon en route to France where he studied at the Sorbonne. After two years in Europe and receipt of a diploma (L'enseignement français a l'etranger), he arrived back in New York in August 1927.

Extract from Passenger List of S.S. Caronia, arriving in New York, August 27, 1927
(Ancestry.com. New York, U.S., Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists [including Castle Rock and Ellis Island], 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010)

Hard on the heels of his two-year sojourn in France (October 15, 1927), Heningburg married a young Alabama woman—Madeline J. Davis (1907-1979). Given the speed with which they married, Heningburg must have known Davis from before he went to Paris, but I could not find the link. At first I thought that they might have grown up together, but the 1910 and 1920 US Censuses found Madeline and her family living on 6th Avenue in Birmingham, Alabama, about 250 miles from Whistler. I did not locate her in the 1930 census, but the 1940 US Census identified her as a "widow" who lived with her widowed mother in Birmingham along with her six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. If Madeline remarried after her marriage to Heningburg, she did not change her surname: the 1940 record knows her as Madeline Davis. But whatever that earlier relationship with Alphonse Heningburg, their marriage did not last long, although I discovered no evidence of a divorce. 

1927 Marriage Certificate of Alphonse Heningburg and Madeline J. Davis
(Ancestry.com. Alabama, U.S., County Marriage Records, 1805-1967 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016)

Heningburg very shortly married again, this time taking as wife Willa Mae Scales (1905-1999) in an August 1929 ceremony in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Newspaper reports of the wedding made no reference to Heningburg's previous match, concentrating instead upon the details of dress and decoration ("Wedding of Miss Scales to Prof. Heningburg Occurs at Pretty Home of Bride's Parents," New Journal and Guide, August 31, 1929).

1929 Marriage Certificate of Alphonse Heningburg and Willa Mae Scales
(Ancestry.com. North Carolina, U.S., Marriage Records, 1741-2011 [database on-line]. Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015)

The 1930 US Census has the couple living on Montgomery Road in Tuskegee, Alabama. According to the census Heningburg was then working at Tuskegee and "Wilhelmina," his wife, worked as a secretary at the local YMCA. The Heningburgs were renting—apparently living on campus—and had nine lodgers, most of whom worked at Tuskegee. Tuskegee records indicate that Heningburg held several positions at the school between 1927 and 1936: for a time he was head of the Academic Department (High School) and occupied his final post—Director of Personnel—between 1934 and 1937 (Daniel T. Williams, Positions at Tuskegee Institute: Names and Tenure [Tuskegee: Tuskegee Institute, 1974], 64, 76).

In 1930 Dr. Robert Moton (1867-1940), then the principal of Tuskegee, accepted a request from the U.S. State Department to name a delegation that would travel to Haiti for "educational study." The committee that Moton named included the President of Howard University, a field secretary of the General Education Board, the president of Georgia State Industrial College (now Savannah State University), and the Dean at Tuskegee. Heningburg was to accompany the delegation: "Prof. Alphonse Heningburg of the department of romance languages at Tuskegee Institute, graduate instructor in French from the Sorbonne, Paris...will act as official interpreter and aide to the committee" (U.S. Department of State, Press Releases, vol. 2, no.14-39a, 1930, pp. 90-91). 

Graduate Education Board Fellowship Record Card for Alphonse Heningburg
(Rockefeller Foundation, Record Group 10.2 [Fellowship Recorder Cards], General Education Board A-Z Box 20 Heningburg-A).

The trip to Haiti began in June, just a few months after Alphonse and Willa welcomed into their family their first child, Gustav (1930-2012), who went on to a distinguished career of his own. Adrienne was born in 1933, but died young. Their second son, Michael, was born in 1938, by which time the Heningburgs were living in North Carolina. 

In 1933 Heningburg received a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation's General Education Board that allowed him to begin graduate study at New York University. That summer he enrolled in several courses devoted to educational administration (along with a course in "Advanced methods of woodworking," which evidently followed up on his early years at Tuskegee). He also passed two foreign language exams and his field prelim exams, meaning that, together with his credits from the Sorbonne, he could complete residence requirements soon. The following summer, thanks to an extension of his fellowship, he was again in New York at work on his dissertation. His NYU supervisors were much impressed, one of them writing to the Graduate Education Board that Heningburg was an 

Unusual man in every respect [and] ranks high among candidates for the degree of Ph.D. [He] is well poised, has [a] splendid outlook, works well with everybody, and is very commendable in every respect (Rockefeller Foundation, Record Group 10.2 [Fellowship Recorder Cards], General Education Board A-Z Box 20 Heningburg-A).

Heningburg had hoped that he might receive the degree as soon as 1935, but in fact he completed all requirements at NYU in 1939, devoting his dissertation to "The Teacher in the Negro College" (List of Doctors and Masters Theses in Education, New York University, First Supplement, October 1936—June 1940, comp. Nouvart Tashjian [New York: RHO Chapter, Phi Delta Kappa, School of Education, New York University, 1941], p. 11).

1939 Yearbook of North Carolina College for Negroes

In 1937 the Heningburgs relocated to Durham, North Carolina where Alphonse began work as a special assistant to the President of what was then called the North Carolina College for Negroes—today's North Carolina Central University (Campus Echo, 25 October 1937; ibid., 8 March 1939). Very soon Heningburg was named vice-president, as confirmed by Durham city directories for 1939 and 1940. The 1942 directory, however, identified his title as "instructor" and the following year called him "professor," indicating that Heningburg had moved from administrative duties to full-time teaching (Ancestry.com. U.S. City Directories, 1822-1975 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011). His foreign language instruction did not overlook the importance of race: the campus newspaper reported that in 1939 during National Negro History Week Heningburg had provided his French students with special classes about Negro Americans and Negro Frenchmen who were "not mentioned in textbooks of this day and age" (Campus Echo, March 8, 1939). From the first Heningburg was active in the local YMCA and was also involved in campus theatre, which in 1939 brought him into contact with Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), who was on campus to direct a play (ibid., 29 November 1939).

New York Age, March 29, 1941

Increasingly Heningburg attracted attention beyond the Durham campus. In 1937 he was elected President of the American Teachers' Association, an organization that represented teachers in African American schools in the South (Historically Black College Leadership and Social Transformation, ed. Vickie L. Suggs [Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2014], p. 48). In spring 1941 newspapers reported that Tuskegee alumni had nominated Heningburg for a spot on the Tuskegee Board of Trustees. Soon thereafter New York Age noted that Heningburg had been elected president of Delaware State College for Colored Students (now Delaware State University). As things turned out, the former president, Dr. Richard Grossley who had been fired by the school's trustees, was reinstated, canceling Heningburg's election (New Journal and Guide, May 17, 1941; Afro-American June 21, 1941; Chicago Defender, June 28, 1941). But it was clear that Heningburg's career trajectory was arcing upward.

New York Age, May 17, 1941

With the outbreak of World War II, Heningburg, like the other Rosenwald Scholars from Grinnell, registered for the draft. The Durham, North Carolina Selective Service Draft Board #2 measured Heningburg at 5 feet, 10 inches tall and gave his weight as 165 pounds, about the same height and weight he reported thirty years later, an indication that Heningburg remained active and in good health (Ancestry.com. U.S. WWII Draft Cards, Young Men, 1940-1947 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011).

Photograph of Alphonse Heningburg and staff with National Urban League Booth at
National Conference of Social Work, Cleveland, Ohio, May 21-27, 1944
(Opportunity 22[1944]:133)

In October 1943 Heningburg took leave from North Carolina College to become Industrial Relations Field Secretary of the National Urban League in New York; the following July he accepted a regular position as Director of the Urban League's Department of Public Education (Opportunity 22[1944]:184). In this post Heningburg often published pieces in the Urban League's journal, Opportunity: "Can America's Dreams Come True?" (22[1944]:14-15, 44); "Down In the Ditch" (ibid., 150); "To the Polls We Go" (ibid., 150-51); "The Negro Veteran Comes Home" (ibid., 23[1945]:3); "What the Urban League Expects for All Races" (ibid., 123); and "The Future Is Yours" (ibid., 181-83). These essays demonstrated Heningburg's skill as an eloquent and spirited defender of African Americans' rights. 

Alphonse Heningburg as Secretary of NY Department of Welfare in
announcement of 1947 NY Metropolitan Council Workshop
(https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/auc.146%3A0051)

Having made the move to New York in 1943, Heningburg never looked back. In 1944 he purchased a home in St. Albans, Queens, and he and his wife joined St. Albans Congregational Church. Although the Borough of Queens attracted ever larger numbers of African Americans, buying a home there did not necessarily happen without racial bias. So far as I know, the Heningburgs themselves encountered no difficulties, but a few years after they moved in, the sale of a house just one block away generated a court fight because the property had a racial covenant attached to it ("Court Grants Writ Barring Sale of a Home in Queens to a Negro," New York Times, February 14, 1947).

In 1946 he became the first African American to be Secretary of the New York City Department of Welfare (today's Department of Social Services), a position he held until 1949. Even before he accepted this latest post, Heningburg had been teaching at NYU, including a course entitled "Racial Contributions to American Culture" (People's Voice, June 8, 1946). In 1949 he was named assistant professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, where he worked until 1953. Among the courses he offered at Adelphi were Educational Philosophy, School and Community, and Audio-Visual Methods, a subject that would influence his later career (The Delphian, February 24, 1953, p. 6).

The home that the Heningburgs purchased in 1944 at 112-27 176th Street, St. Albans, Queens, New York

Heningburg occasionally taught elsewhere, including NYU, Hunter College, Yeshiva University and Hofstra University. He was also a frequent lecturer for numerous civic associations and inter-faith groups in the greater New York region. His interest in foreign languages and his international experience also encouraged him and his wife to sponsor for several years in the 1950s an annual gathering of French students (who spent a month in the US under the auspices of the Experiment in International Living) to hear from and visit with "prominent Long Islanders, Negro and white, from the fields of social work, politics, journalism and business" (Pittsburgh Courier, December 18, 1954).

At about this same time Heningburg joined several other African American activists to form the "Non-Partisan Citizens' Committee for Reapportionment" in Queens with the goal of forcing politicians to make sure that Blacks, who made up a gradually larger proportion of Queens residents, had a voice in government. As Martha Biondi reported, "Heningburg called the fight for 'political autonomy' for African Americans 'the most important issue that has confronted this community'" (To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Post-War New York City [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003], p. 218; "Queens Leaders Set to Elect Negro," New York Amsterdam News, June 23, 1951). One consequence of this commitment was his willingness to stand for election to the City Council from Queens; were he elected he would have been the first African American elected to public office in Queens. Running as an independent Democrat on the Liberal Party and Independent Party slates, Heningburg had to face a Democratic incumbent as well as a Republican and two other candidates (New York Amsterdam News, October 17, 1953), but he gained useful endorsements from the Citizens Union, which called him "Qualified and Preferred," and from the Queensboro Independent Citizens Committee for Good Government, which asserted that it could "think of no one individual whose background and virtues are more deserving of our support." Several other groups weighed in with similar views (ibid., October 24, 1953).

Heningburg's 1953 New York Teacher's Certificate
(Special Collections Research Center, Gelman Library, George Washington University, National Education Association Records (NEA1007), American Teachers Association and ATA Affiliates, 1911-1986, Box 3043, Folder 8, "Alphonse Heningburg")

In 1953 Heningburg made another career change, becoming first Director of Audio-Visual Services (later Media Coordinator) and Director of Community Relations for the Union Free School District #27, West Hempstead, New York. Although Heningburg had taught university courses concerned with audio-visual sources, the change in occupation nevertheless surprises. Certainly West Hempstead was close to Garden City where he had been teaching at Adelphi and it was also more convenient than Manhattan for commuting from his home in St. Albans. At the same time, this position gave him less reason to deal publicly with issues of race, to which he had committed considerable energy over the preceding decade. But Long Island seems to have drawn the family's affections with increasing power: around this time the Heningburgs purchased property in Sag Harbor and there built themselves a home, the carpenter training that Heningburg had received at Tuskegee proving useful ("A Resort Community Whose Residents Happen to be Black," New York Times, July 20, 1969).

Alabama Tribune, December 5, 1958, p. 8

Heningburg remained at West Hempstead until 1971, when he retired from the schools. The only interruption came in 1962 when the Agency for International Development "borrowed" him to help "build, equip, and staff a school of business and law at the University of Tunis." By his own testimony, Heningburg interrupted what had been a three-year contract after only 15 months "because of illness in the family" (Special Collections Research Center, Gelman Library, George Washington University, National Education Association Records (NEA1007),  Box 3043, Folder 8, "Alphonse Heningburg"). But this experience served him well, because after he retired from West Hempstead, he accepted a position as Vice President of Learnex, Inc., a company that was "training people in eight [West African] cities for employment in the building and management of hotels" ("Cocktail Chit Chat," Jet, March 23, 1972).

"Cocktail Chitchat," Jet, February 28, 1980

In 1980 the Heningburg children arranged a joyous celebration in Virginia of their parents' 50th wedding anniversary, a half-century of accomplishment and adaptation that Alphonse and Willa had shared. 

###

Sadly, that long record of shared adventure was ruptured within two years of celebrating a golden anniversary: Alphonse died in Orange, New Jersey, July 22, 1982. He was eighty years old, and had filled his life with achievements. The last child of nine, orphaned (it seems) when he was only four, Heningburg went on to excel at Tuskegee, Grinnell College, the Sorbonne, and New York University. He taught at several universities, and at least twice served in those schools' administrations. In his forties he worked for the National Urban League in New York, helping set the post-war political agenda for African Americans. In the Eisenhower years he moved from university teaching to the public schools, administering audio-visual resources and reaching out to the West Hempstead community. In the midst of these Long Island occupations Heningburg took leave in 1962 in order to assist in the establishment of programs at the University at Tunis, a loud echo of his visit to Haiti in 1930 with African American educators. He concluded his work career in the private sector, bringing to Learnex some of the skills he had accumulated earlier. Through it all he maintained a healthy marriage which lasted more than a half-century. He and his wife raised two sons, both of whom served their country in the US Army and then put their lives to work for their communities and for fellow African Americans.

It's an impressive resume, reflective of Heningburg's intelligence and energy. Although he encountered racism when first he ventured onto the Grinnell campus and into downtown Grinnell, he did not let this hatred undermine his accomplishments. An excellent student at Grinnell, where  he became the second African American inducted into the Grinnell chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and later an outstanding student and teacher at his high school alma mater—Tuskegee—and then at North Carolina Central, Heningburg introduced legions of students to the world of Spaniards and Frenchmen, especially drawing attention to the Black men and women of those countries. In New York, where he served both the National Urban League and the City of New York, he applied his learning to advance the cause of African Americans in mid-century America. If his last productive years focused upon Long Island, even then he interrupted this work to imagine and equip a university in North Africa. 

Grinnell College is fortunate to name among its graduates many women and men of accomplishment, but few can have lived lives so full of meaning as did Alphonse Heningburg, the third of Grinnell's Rosenwald Scholars.