From Alien to Citizen: A Jamaican Comes to Grinnell

Land-locked in the middle of the American plains, Grinnell does not often attract Jamaicans whose island home rises from the Caribbean Sea 1800 miles to the south. However, if you search for "Jamaica" in the on-line Grinnell College Alumni Directory, you will discover the names of ten Jamaicans, all of them having attended the college in the last ten years. This result is hardly surprising at a time when internationals comprise almost twenty percent of the college's student population. But the numerous internationals attending Grinnell today contrast sharply with the College enrollment of a century ago. The student body of 1920s Grinnell College was overwhelmingly domestic: the majority of students hailed from Iowa and almost every Grinnell student was white.

Photograph of Sebert Dove from His 1930 Declaration of Intention to Become US Citizen

Into this very white, homogeneous midwestern world came Sebert Dove (1895-1948), a Jamaican who graduated from Grinnell College in 1924. Today's post tells the story of Dove, who, having immigrated to New York City in 1917, encountered there Grinnell's Edward Steiner who steered the young Jamaican to J. B. Grinnell's prairie town and its college. After graduation Dove forged a path of accomplishment. Along the way he exchanged his natal country for the United States, to whose less privileged citizens he brought energy and education.

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Jamaican Civil Birth Registration for Sebert Constantine Dove, October 11, 1895
(Jamaican Civil Registration via Ancestry.com)

Sebert Constantine Dove, along with his twin sister, Burdecco, was born October 11, 1895 to Charles Sebert Dove and Adriana Russell Dove in Clarendon, Jamaica. One of the largest parishes in Jamaica, Clarendon is home to tobacco and cotton farmers, but is now also the site of bauxite mines. Although the Anglican church was long the established church in Jamaica, other Protestant churches gained a foothold in the nineteenth century. Early in the twentieth century Clarendon was, in the words of a visiting Catholic priest, "a very nest of Baptists" whom Jesuits were trying to convert to Catholicism ("A Letter from Father Patrick F. Mulry," Woodstock Letters, vol. 35, no. 2 [September 1, 1906], p. 225). Sebert Dove's father was one of the early conquests of the Jesuits, and, once converted, Charles Dove taught in the local Catholic school. Young Sebert followed in his father's Catholic footsteps, and is remembered as having served as altar boy at Catholic mass (ibid.) 

According to a much later account, young Sebert attended Wolmer's School, a highly-regarded Jamaican institution that followed closely the traditional British grammar-school curriculum (Amsterdam News, October 30, 1948). The same source remarks that Dove was subsequently "articled to a barrister"—presumably a kind of training internship—preparatory to his receiving a position in the Jamaican civil administration. Indeed, the Blue Book of the Island Jamaica 1916-1917 confirms that Dove worked as a clerical assistant to the Legislative Council from May 1, 1913 (when he would have been seventeen years old) until February 3, 1917 (p. 48). Almost immediately thereafter the 21-year-old Dove left Jamaica, booking passage on the SS Danube to New York, where he arrived March 29, 1917. 

Undated Photograph of S. S. Danube
(https://www.statueofliberty.org/statue-of-liberty/)

What drove the decision to emigrate and where Dove lived and worked in New York I could not learn. There can be no doubt, however, that over the next few years Dove encountered numerous challenges in the American metropolis, then teeming with immigrants like himself. No evidence reports the details, but it seems likely that the young immigrant, like the immigrant waves that preceded him, worked in low-paying jobs and lived in crowded housing. It comes as a surprise, therefore, to learn that it was in New York City that Dove learned about distant, prairie-bound Grinnell. Several years after his 1917 arrival, Dove, speaking at a Sunday evening service of Grinnell's Methodists, explained that he had met Edward A. Steiner (1886-1956), Grinnell's Rand Professor of Applied Christianity, in New York. The newspaper story on the talk says that Dove "heard [Steiner] lecture, spoke to him and was encouraged to come out here [to Grinnell] and educate himself" (Grinnell Register, March 10, 1924). 

Undated Photograph of Edward A. Steiner
(https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/1953)

Edward A. Steiner was probably the best-known of the college's faculty at that time. Himself an immigrant, Steiner was author of numerous books about the immigrant experience and New York newspapers of the time frequently advertised his books, including On the Trail of the Immigrant (1906), The Immigrant Tide: Its Ebb and Flow (1909), and From Alien to Citizen (1914), Steiner's autobiography. Living in New York for almost three years, Dove may well have seen some of these titles in bookstores or have seen their newspaper advertisements, perhaps suggesting a connection to his own circumstances.

Book Advertisement in New York Tribune, August 30, 1920

Steiner also occasionally lectured in New York, as he did, for example, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on May 4, 1920. Whether Dove was in attendance at this particular talk ("Nationalizing America Through a Common Historic Experience") I do not know, but, as he later told Grinnell's Methodists, Dove in fact had attended a Steiner lecture somewhere in New York, there meeting the professor and accepting his suggestion to attend Grinnell. 

Notice of a Lecture by Edward Steiner at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, May 4, 1920
("What's On Today," New York Tribune, May 4, 1920)

And Steiner, who had encouraged another Black man to attend Grinnell years before, was not beyond encouraging young Dove to enroll at Grinnell. Further evidence of Steiner's role in Dove's life comes from the college directories of the early 1920s, which report that Dove lived at 921 High Street all four years. The owner and occupant of the house at this address was the Edward Steiner family, proving that the professor took more than a passing interest in the education and well-being of Sebert Dove (Grinnell College Directories 1920-1923).

Exactly how Dove reached Grinnell no record survives to say. Like most other Grinnell students of the time, the young Jamaican likely arrived at the Grinnell railroad depot, and made his way a few blocks north to the college campus. Dove was certainly in place in time to begin the autumn 1920 semester. According to the 1924 Cyclone, from the start Dove "loaded up with all the stiffest courses in college, mathematics and chemistry being his major and minor, and in spite of this fact [he] has been able to maintain a high standard of scholarship." His affection for chemistry did not weaken over time, as Dove remarked in a 1938 letter to Grinnell chemistry professor Dr. Leo P. Sherman (1888-1978): "...your communication," he wrote Sherman, "...added much to the ineffable delight I experienced in getting a letter from the Chemistry Department at Grinnell with your name on it. I still live over my days under you—they were rich" ("May 2, 1938 letter from Sebert Dove to Dr. Sherman," Alumni Letters to Chemistry Department, Pamphlet 51-51.3 C42a, Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives).

Photograph of the Cosmopolitan Club; Dove in first row, 4th from left)
(1924 Cyclone)

But Dove was far from a mere classroom grind. Already in his second semester at college he was elected secretary and treasurer of the Cosmopolitan Club, the purpose of which was "to unite peoples of racial, national, and religious differences into a group of brotherhood and democracy" (Scarlet and Black, April 13, 1921; ibid., November 16, 1921; ibid., November 22, 1922). This ambition was also prominent in the Macy Club, a group that focused attention upon politics and society. Dove was the sole international student in the club which in 1922 elected him vice-president (ibid., May 10, 1922; ibid., October 18, 1922). His affection for mathematics led the young Jamaican to attend the annual picnics of the Mathematics Club (ibid., October 7, 1922), and for a time he worked at one of the town's newspapers (Grinnell Register, March 10, 1924), providing him with contacts beyond the campus boundaries.

Photograph of the then-new Men's Dormitories, Grinnell College; Building One on Left
(Grinnell Men's Dormitories [Grinnell College, 1918], p. 2; Digital Grinnell)

Because he lived off-campus Dove extended his familiarity with Grinnell's townsfolk. Like other students who resided in town—either in their own family's homes or in rented rooms—Dove received affiliation with one of the men's residence halls. Along with 19 other men (including three Chinese men), Dove was affiliated with Building One, now known as Smith Hall (Scarlet and Black, October 14, 1922). Joining Dove with this building was probably not random, as all the Rosenwald Scholars—all African American men—also lived in Smith almost their entire four years (Hosea Campbell and Gordon Kitchen both lived elsewhere their senior years) (Grinnell College Directories 1919-1924).

Undated Photograph of Mrs. L. A. Renfrow (1875-1962)

In addition to his college friendships, Dove developed close connections with the town's small African American community. Strong evidence of this relationship comes from two funerals for which Dove, alongside the College's Rosenwald Scholars and local African American men, served as pall bearer. For example, when African American Ruth Lucas (1893-1923), wife of Grinnell's Bruce Lucas, died in February 1923, Dove—like college men Collis Davis '23, Alphonse Heningburg '24, and Gordon Kitchen '25, along with African American townsmen Rudolph Renfrow and George Monroe (b. 1891)—carried the casket (Grinnell Herald, February 20, 1923). Likewise, when Eliza Jane Craig (1841-1924), aged mother of Mrs. L. A. Renfrow, died June 6, 1924, Dove took his place beside Black townsmen L. A. Renfrow, John Brown Lucas (?1861-1946), Solomon Brown and college men Heningburg and Kitchen (ibid., June 10, 1924). Experience with local African American families and with the Black college men gave Dove a network within which he could better appreciate the meaning of race in America.

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Photograph of 1921 High School Graduates of Straight College
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/vieilles_annonces/4602046421)

Apparently during his student days in Grinnell Dove transferred his religious commitment to the Methodists. As noted earlier, at least one Sunday evening Dove was the featured speaker at Grinnell's Methodist church. More telling are newspaper reports that identify Dove, along with local African American girl Helen Renfrow, among the members of the Methodist Tri-M Sunday School class (Grinnell Register, June 24, 1923). Nothing else from his college years speaks to Dove's religion, but, after graduation and a brief return to New York, Dove began teaching in historically Black colleges supported by the American Missionary Association, a Congregationalist institution. In 1925 and 1926 he taught physics, chemistry, and mathematics at Straight College (now Straight University) in New Orleans where some 500 students attended elementary, high school, and college (80th Annual Report of American Missionary Association [NY: American Missionary Society, 1926], p. 60). The next two years found him teaching at Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University), a women's college founded by Methodists in Austin, Texas. Apparently Dove also served as Dean there before taking a new position as registrar at Paul Quinn College, another historically Black Methodist institution then based in Waco, Texas. 

Undated Photograph of Classroom Building of Tillotson College
(1930 Yearbook of Tillotson College, Blue Bonnet Hill)

One year later he left Waco, accepting appointment as head of the Science Department at Booker T. Washington High School (now Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts) in Dallas, Texas. In the world of Jim Crow, Washington High School was an all-Black school, so that Dove, like James Redmon, his fellow Grinnell alumnus, taught school within the world of racially segregated public education. Dove taught chemistry at Washington, and, by his own account, enjoyed "the respect of students and administrators" ("1938 Letter from Sebert Dove to Dr. Leo Sherman"). 

In September 1928, "culminating a long romance," Dove married fellow Jamaican, Amy Delmena Stern (1897-1999) in St. Louis, Missouri. The 1930 US census found the couple living at 2617 Cochran Street, Dallas, where they shared an address with another African American couple. By 1940 the Doves had their own Dallas home at 2323 Jordan Street, the better to accommodate their four children: Donald (born August 7, 1930); Eleanor (born August 28, 1932); Adrian (born August 31, 1934); and Carmen (born November 17, 1938). In these years, both Sebert and Amy traveled back and forth to Jamaica (daughter Eleanor was born in Jamaica), but Dallas was their home. In 1930 Dove filed a Declaration of Intention to seek U.S. citizenship, but why he chose this moment to file is unclear (his wife did not file until 1949). Perhaps officials at Washington High recommended it. Whatever the motivation, Dove completed the Petition for Citizenship two years later, and was formally sworn into citizenship in March 1933. Alien no more, Sebert Dove was officially American.

Top half of Sebert Dove's September 8, 1932 Petition for U.S. Citizenship
(Ancestry.com)

World War II brought some interruption to the family routine. When Dove registered for the draft in February 1942, he was still teaching at Washington High, but soon he took over direction of the Muller Street USO in Gainesville, about 70 miles north of Dallas. Perhaps in the era succeeding U.S. entry into World War II, Dove, now 47 years old, saw the USO as an opportunity to demonstrate his civic commitment. Like the Brownwood Texas USO that fellow Grinnell alum Gordon Kitchen oversaw, the Muller Street USO served African American soldiers, reflecting the on-going racial segregation of the US Army. Dove threw himself into the job, and earned appreciation within the Gainesville community. Among other things, he engineered the remodeling of USO facilities, providing new showers, locker rooms, and new entry points. When professional architects proved unavailable, Dove even drew his own blueprints, thereby hastening the remodeling, all this with the aim of improving life for the African American soldiers at Camp Howze (Gainesville Weekly Register, February 3, 1944).

Gainesville Weekly Register, February 3, 1944

In 1945 Sebert Dove made a seemingly abrupt move, not only to a different location and different job, but also to a different profession. Reasserting an association with Catholicism, Dove moved to California to become a full-time social worker for Catholic Youth Organization in the Watts and Willowbrook sections of Los Angeles. These areas had grown quickly during the so-called "Great Migration," which had brought tract housing and many African Americans to Los Angeles. Catholic Youth gained a foothold here and proved to be an important ally to the mainly Black working-class population that settled Watts and Willowbrook.

How Dove came to know of this position and what moved him to accept it I don't know, but evidently he took to the work very well. An obituary described him as founder-president of Los Angeles's Willowbrook Community Improvement Organization and as field director for the LA Catholic Youth Organization. His specialty, the newspaper continued, focused upon "the interracial field and organizing clubs, securing scholarships, jobs and housing for youth and their families" (New York Amsterdam News, October 30, 1948). In the spring of 1948 Dove received the Los Angeles Urban League Award of Achievement; the citation lauded "his training, experience, fortitude and persistence" which brought "credit and honor to his vocation and community" (New York Age, May 22, 1948).

Los Angeles Sentinel, May 22, 1948

Hard on the heels of this award, Sebert Dove died suddenly in his Los Angeles home, victim of a ruptured aortic aneurysm (September 30, 1948; the Alumni Scarlet & Black [Nov '48-Jan '49, p. 8] says he died October 2, but the death certificate confirms the September date). Only 53 years old, Dove left behind his wife of twenty years and his four children, the oldest of whom was eighteen, the youngest only ten. Catholic priests presided at his funeral at the Church of St. Leo the Great, and he was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery October 5, 1948 (New York Amsterdam News, October 30, 1948), implicit confirmation of a return to the Catholic Church of his youth. Apparently the entire family embraced Catholicism, because, when daughter Eleanor married eleven years later, she took her wedding vows in the same church that had hosted her father's funeral mass (Los Angeles Sentinel, September 10, 1959).

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A diminutive man—just five feet, four inches tall and about 140 pounds—Sebert Dove, a Jamaican immigrant, had accomplished a great deal among African Americans of his adopted country. Newly arrived in the U.S. when he reached central Iowa, Dove nevertheless made common purpose with the Renfrows and Lucases of Grinnell, just as he did with the African American Rosenwald Scholars at Grinnell College. As member of the college's Cosmopolitan Club Dove helped "unite peoples of racial, national, and religious differences," an ambition he shared with the club's faculty advisor, Edward Steiner. After graduation, Dove immersed himself in African American communities in the U.S. South, teaching at historically black colleges in Louisiana and Texas, and then becoming head of science at the all-Black Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. There he flourished, sharing his love of chemistry and mathematics with young Black men and women. World War II opened yet another door for Dove, who became director of the Gainesville, Texas Muller Street African American USO club. Working among African American soldiers at Camp Howze, Dove displayed the same enthusiasm for improvement that he had shared with college and high school science students. Finally, he landed in California, where, as a social worker within the Los Angeles Catholic Youth Organization, he reached out to the multi-racial poor of Watts and Willowbrook, helping young men and women find jobs, win scholarships, and obtain suitable housing. As before, Dove lived the motto of the college Cosmopolitan Club, advancing brotherhood and democracy.

Cover of Edward A. Steiner's 1914 Autobiography

Dove formally became a US citizen only in March 1933, but long before that moment Jamaican-born Sebert Dove had applied himself to the citizen's task of improving his adopted country. Over the thirty-one years of his American sojourn, Sebert Dove passed from alien to citizen, repeating the metamorphosis of his Grinnell College mentor and host, Professor Edward Steiner, whose autobiography bore that exact title.  But then, far too quickly, Dove's light went dark, short-circuiting a life of service to African Americans.