How Prairie View A&M lured a former Ivy League president out of retirement
Prairie View A&M University interim President Ruth J. Simmons, the sole finalist for permanent president, interviewed on October 25, 2017. (Marjorie Kamys Cotera for The Texas Tribune)
Ruth Simmons, a pioneering college administrator and the first black president of an Ivy League university, thought she was done leading colleges after she retired from Brown University. Five years later, she’s back to lead Prairie View A&M.
It was not Ruth Simmons’ first time being memorialized on a T-shirt.
Still, seeing the purple “Ruth the Truth” shirts around the Prairie View A&M University campus during homecoming week made the former Brown University president put her hand to her face and shake her head.
“I cannot comment on another person’s bad idea,” she joked.
The purple shirts were a sign of the excitement on the historically black campus last week. Not only were students and alumni gearing up for the weekend’s festivities but also Simmons, a high-profile black administrator who took up the Prairie View presidency on an interim basis this summer, had just accepted the permanent job. (more)
Related: Female presidents are playing critical roles in the survival of HBCUs
Top 120+ Recommended African-American Children’s Books
Children book authors, industry professionals, and avid readers contributed their favorite children’s books to this list. We know children and young readers will enjoy most, if not all, of these books, as they have already brought joy to countless children. We recommend printed books for young readers, or when reading to a child. Some of these books are decades old, but are still in print due to their significance. Others are brand new, reflecting contemporary voices and themes.
The titles below are currently listed in order of publication date (newest to oldest). A list, even one with 120+ books, can not possibly capture all the great titles available. You can always discover other excellent tiles on the list of Coretta Scott King Award Winning Books and elsewhere on AALBC.com. Here is a printable list of all the books on this list and a beautiful collage of the books covers.
If you feel strongly about uplifting children through books please read and share, “Ten Steps to Promote Diversity in Children’s Literature.” Also, be sure to check out this great sites for children’s The Brown Book Shelf (who contributed to this list) and or by searching hundreds of other websites using our Huria Search engine. (more)
Also check out our list of Bestselling Children’s Book Authors and our Bestselling Children’s Books lists.
Chronicles: Former Dunbar High has remarkable run in athletic competition
The Dunbar High School football team about 1940 wore uniforms and helmets passed down to them by Lubbock High School. (Provided by Southwest Collection/Texas Tech)
Caprock Chronicles is written or edited by Paul Carlson, emeritus professor of history at Texas Tech. This week’s essay reviews Lubbock’s former Dunbar High School’s state championships in the segregated, but defunct, Prairie View Interscholastic League.
The former Dunbar High School in Lubbock enjoyed an enviable record in academics and athletics. Indeed, in football, basketball and track the school won several state championships.
In 1920, a small school for African-American children opened in the Flats neighborhood – the first school in Lubbock for black students. Three years later, citizens led by Will Sedberry and Oscar Iles built a school in the same area at 17th Street and Avenue C. (more)
First African-American Aggies celebrated at reunion hosted by the Black Former Student Network
More than a dozen of the first African-American students admitted to Texas A&M gathered on the university campus as honored guests for the 2017 Black Former Students Network Reunion on Friday. (Steve Kuhlmann/The Eagle)
Hugh McElroy said arriving on the Texas A&M University campus for the first time presented him with a stark difference from the educational surroundings he had growing up attending all-black Houston schools.
The class of ’71 graduate, along with three of his classmates from Worthing High School in Southeast Houston, was among the first African-American students to attend Texas A&M. “It was different,” McElroy said. “All of us, certainly as a sign of the times then, went to all-black high schools, so coming to A&M was the polar opposite of that.”
More than a dozen of the first African-American Aggies – including McElroy, who now lives in the area – gathered on the university campus ahead of the Black Former Student Network’s 2017 reunion weekend in College Station Friday as honored guests for the two-day event.
McElroy said while he is proud to be counted among the group, he said he is, first and foremost, “damn proud to be an Aggie.” (more)
TIPHC Bookshelf
Published scholarship on black history in Texas is growing and we’d like to share with you some suggested readings, both current and past, from some of the preeminent history scholars in Texas and beyond. We invite you to take a look at our bookshelf page – including a featured selection – and check back as the list grows. A different selection will be featured each week. We welcome suggestions and reviews. This week, we offer, “The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals,” edited by Bruce Jackson.
The Negro In the eyes of many white Americans, North and South, the Negro did not have a culture until the Emancipation Proclamation. With few exceptions, serious collecting of Negro folklore by whites did not begin until the Civil War-and it was to be another four decades before black Americans would begin to appreciate their own cultural heritage. Few of the earlier writers realized that they had observed and recorded not simply a manifestation of a particular way of life but also a product peculiarly American and specifically Negro, a synthesis of African and American styles and traditions.
The folksongs, speech, beliefs, customs, and tales of the American Negro are discussed in this anthology, originally published in 1967, of thirty-five articles, letters, and reviews from nineteenth-century periodicals. Published between 1838 and 1900 and written by authors who range from ardent abolitionist to dedicated slaveholder, these articles reflect the authors’ knowledge of, and attitudes toward, the Negro and his folklore. From the vast body of material that appeared on this subject during the nineteenth century, editor Bruce Jackson has culled fresh articles that are basic folklore and represent a wide range of material and attitudes. In addition to his introduction to the volume, Jackson has prefaced each article with a commentary. He has also supplied a supplemental bibliography on Negro folklore.
This Week in Texas Black History, Nov. 12-18
James Lee Dickey
Nov12
On this date in 1893, physician James Lee Dickey was born near Waco. A graduate of Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in 1916, he entered Meharry Medical College in Nashville and graduated in 1921. Dickey returned to Texas to help is widowed mother raise his eight siblings and settled in Taylor, northeast of Austin. Dickey was the only black doctor in Williamson County and one of only 130 black doctors in Texas. He established a medical facility that began with a three-bedroom clinic and expanded to a fifteen-bed hospital with modern surgical and obstetrical facilities. The clinic was open to all needy patients — regardless of race — from Williamson, Lee, Travis, Milam, Bell and Bastrop counties. Early in his career he also curbed a typhoid fever epidemic in 1932 through a vigorous vaccination program. He became a trustee of Tillotson college and in 1953 was named Taylor’s most outstanding citizen by the chamber of commerce, the first time a black man had been so honored in the community.
Ken Houston
Nov12
Ken Houston, Pro Football Hall of Fame safety, was born on this day in 1944 in Lufkin, Texas. Houston played collegiately at Prairie View A&M, then starred with the Houston Oilers and Washington Redskins. Houston became the National Football League’s premier strong safety of 1970s and was All-Pro or All-AFC/NFC eight of nine years, 1971-1979.
John Hill Westbrook
Nov13
On this day in 1947, John Hill Westbrook was born in Groesbeck, Texas. On September 10, 1966, Westbrook, as a running back for Baylor University, became the first black football player to compete in the Southwest Conference when he entered a game in the fourth quarter. His debut came one week before the more celebrated start for Southern Methodist University’s Jerry LeVias.
Doris Hollis Pemberton
Nov14
Doris Hollis Pemberton, reporter, civic leader, and author, was born on this day in Nacogdoches, Texas in 1917. Pemberton studied at Texas College and graduated from Texas Southern University. In 1944, as a writer for the Dallas Express, she became the first black reporter to cover a state Democratic convention in Texas. In Houston, during the 1950s, Pemberton helped develop classes for black students in arts, crafts, and science at local museums. She was the author of “Juneteenth at Comanche Crossing.”
Conrad Johnson
Nov15
Conrad “Prof” Johnson, director of the legendary Kashmere High School Stage Band and one of Houston’s greatest jazz educators, was born on this day in 1915 in Victoria, Texas. Johnson taught in Houston schools for more than 30 years. He created and led the Kashmere band during its heyday in the 1960s and ’70s when it was among the nation’s best, and traveled across the United States and to Europe and Japan. The band won 42 out of 46 contests it entered between 1969 and 1977, and recorded eight albums featuring more than 20 original compositions by Johnson. The band is featured in the documentary, “Thunder Soul.”
Zina Garrison
Nov16
On this date in 1963, tennis professional Zina Garrison was born in Houston. In 1990 at Wimbledon, Garrison became the first Black woman since Althea Gibson to reach a Grand Slam final. In 1989, she reached a career high ranking of No. 4 in the world and teamed with Pam Shriver to win an Olympic gold medal in 1988 in doubles competition in Seoul, Korea.
Elvin Hayes
Nov17
Basketball player Elvin Hayes, one of the first black athletes at the University of Houston, was born on this day in 1945 in Rayville, La. Hayes was a three-time All-America and was selected as the College Player of the Year in 1968. As a pro, he was the first pick in the 1968 NBA draft by the San Diego (later Houston) Rockets, and would also star for the Baltimore/Washington Bullets. Hayes retired in 1984 as the second-leading scorer in league history with 27,313 points, was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1990, and was named one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players in 1996.
Blog: Ron Goodwin, Ph.D., author, PVAMU history professor
Ron Goodwin’s bi-weekly blog appears exclusively for TIPHC. Goodwin is a San Antonio native and Air Force veteran. Generally, his column addresses contemporary issues in the black community and how they relate to black history. He and the TIPHC staff welcome your comments.
Latest Entries
A New Hope
Forgive me for borrowing the title of one of the most profitable films in history, “Star Wars: A New Hope.” I’ve always been enamored by space. I’m a child of the 1960s and I remember playing with my Major Matt Mason action figure (not a doll!) as my family [...]
Tell me the truth
Democracy – a) government by the people, b) a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them, directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections. Merriam-Webster Dictionary There were many things I learned from my father. [...]
Submissions Wanted
Historians, scholars, students, lend us your…writings. Help us produce the most comprehensive documentation ever undertaken for the African American experience in Texas. We encourage you to contribute items about people, places, events, issues, politics/legislation, sports, entertainment, religion, etc., as general entries or essays. Our documentation is wide-ranging and diverse, and you may research and write about the subject of your interest or, to start, please consult our list of suggested biographical entries and see submission guidelines. However, all topics must be approved by TIPHC editors before beginning your research/writing.
We welcome your questions or comments. Please contact Mr. Michael Hurd, Director of TIPHC, at mdhurd@pvamu.edu.