Cheryl Adrienne Brown was born in New York City and later broke down racial barriers in 1970 when she became the first African-American woman to compete in the Miss America Pageant. She studied dance and worked as a model before moving to Decorah for college studies. In addition to her studies, Brown found time to work as a professional model. She opted to attend Luther College in Decorah, Iowa because her family was the fifth-generation Lutheran, and her minister recommended the college to her. “I’m glad I’m Miss Iowa instead of Miss New York,” Brown told The New York Times. She further asserted that she had more of the chances of being judged for her origin in that part of the country. The racial issues were too intense in New York.

Learn more: https://blackfilmarchive.com/Cheryl-1

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

The root of the Des Moines Black Panther movement traces back to the mid-1960s. According to The Annals of Iowa, black politics and activism for civil rights played a prominent role in the city of Des Moines, and on one evening in particular, a large group of young African Americans took a stand against racial discrimination in housing, employment, education and politics with a violent demonstration against police in Good Park, Des Moines’ largest black neighborhood. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was created in response to the riots to help augment black pride, bring to light black oppression and encourage African American leaders in politics.

Learn more: https://timesdelphic.com/2020/03/black-panthers-in-des-moines-history-of-advocacy/

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Willie Stevenson Glanton was dedicated to the law, human services, and civil rights. Educated in Tennessee and in Washington, D.C., she was admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1953. In the 1960s, the U.S. State Department sent her to Africa and Southeast Asia to compare laws and their application to women in these countries. In the U.S., Glanton was the first woman Assistant Polk County Attorney and she was the first African-American female to be elected to the Iowa State Legislature. Glanton held leadership positions on numerous boards, commissions and councils, and in church, civic, and community organizations. A member of Who's Who in America, she was the first woman and first African American to be elected president of the Iowa Chapter Federal Bar Association and represented that association in a people-to-people tour of China, Finland, and the Soviet Union in 1986. Glanton was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1986.

Learn more: https://humanrights.iowa.gov/willie-stevenson-glanton

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

​Born in Centerville, Iowa, in 1932, Dr. Simon Estes first singing experience came at age eight when he performed with the choir in Centerville’s Second Baptist Church. After enrolling at the University of Iowa in the late 1950s as a pre-med and psychology major, Dr. Estes became the first African American member of the university’s Old Gold Singers.

He would go on to build a global reputation and win numerous awards and accolades while performing with 84 of the major international opera companies as well as 115 orchestras around the world. He also advocated for more opportunities in opera for African-American performers.

Learn more: https://www.thehistorymakers.org/biography/simon-estes-41 and https://www.dmacc.edu/finearts/Pages/simon-estes.aspx

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Des Moines native and Drake University graduate Harriette Curley was hired as the first African-American teacher in the Des Moines Public Schools system in 1946. Curley taught kindergarten at Perkins Elementary.

Protesters at the time petitioned the board not to hire Curley. But as Superintendent N.D. McCombs noted: "She topped the list of applicants by a wide margin. The board has had a policy, in writing, for years that all boys and girls get the best teachers for the money we can pay. And they are not hired on a basis of color, creed, or nationality."

From the Des Moines Register: https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/life/2020/02/07/10-iowa-black-history-month-facts-you-should-know/4602138002/
#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

The house known as Tate Arms provided off-campus dormitory-style housing for African American students during a time when the University of Iowa barred them from living on campus and housing was difficult for Black students to find due to racial discrimination. Prior to the establishment of rooming houses for Black students such as the Iowa Federation Home and the Tate Arms, Black male students generally roomed with one of the few Black families in Iowa City or worked as servants in white fraternity houses. Black female students often obtained room and board in the households of university professors in exchange for performing household duties. Until African American students were allowed to live on campus, these two houses—and others like them that have since been demolished—provided a way for Black students to pursue their education in a racially segregated city. Many of the students who lived in these houses became active in the Civil Rights Movement during the mid-twentieth century.

Learn more: https://www.icgov.org/project/preserving-black-history-iowa-city-tate-arms-and-iowa-federation-home
#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Ruth Bluford Anderson was a University of Northern Iowa Associate Professor of Social Work, specialized in researching minority alcohol programs and public policy, and its effect on public services administration. She served as co-chair of the first statewide institute on the problems of women alcoholics, and was a member of the Iowa Substance Abuse Commission.

Anderson contributed her leadership abilities to the Iowa Coalition of Community Organizations, the Iowa Mental Health Association, and local and interstate branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 1988, she was elected to the Black Hawk County Board of Supervisors, the first African-American woman to serve on a county board of supervisors in the state.

In Anderson’s autobiography, published by the University of Iowa School of Social Work, she talks about growing up poor in Iowa, and then working her way through college to become a professor of social work and helping others who found themselves in similar situations as she did as a child.

- from https://uispeccoll.tumblr.com/post/611782789244862464/voices-from-the-stacks
#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

LeRoy V. "Snake" Whyte (changed from “White”) was trumpeter, jazz musician and song writer. His father was a minister and coal miner. Whyte left home and joined a carnival band and eventually joined the Kansas City jazz circuit; traveling all over the country playing with big bands like Duke Ellington. He wrote music for many famous groups; produced and recorded music in Los Angeles. He returned to Perry and started the Roy Whyte Big Band.
#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Edna Griffin was a longtime activist who grew up in predominantly white neighborhoods in New Hampshire and Massachusetts before attending Fisk University, where she studied sociology. In the 1940s, she moved to Des Moines and served in the Women’s Army Corps at Fort Des Moines during World War II. She helped end racial discrimination at Katz Drug Store in Des Moines — a local business known for not serving African Americans that refused to serve Edna and two other African Americans ice cream in 1948. The store claimed they were “not equipped to serve colored people,” according to the Iowa History Journal.

The group took this case of discrimination to court and won. Their victory set precedent several years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott and spurred the enforcement of Iowa’s 1884 Civil Rights Act — though the actual practices of Katz Drug Store did not change until the business felt the economic effects of pickets, boycotts, and sit-ins that Edna helped to coordinate. For decades after the Katz case, Edna was deeply involved in fighting against continued discrimination in business services and housing, racial profiling by the police of African American men, and racist hiring practices.

Learn more: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/edna-griffin-denied-service

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Lulu Johnson grew up in the southwestern Iowa, played 6-on-6 basketball in high school, and earned three degrees from the University of Iowa. After graduation, Johnson would become an esteemed educator while researching the lives of African Americans, and also a civil rights pioneer as an activist against segregationist policies. On June 24, 2021, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors of Johnson County, Iowa unanimously voted to change the county’s name to Lulu Merle Johnson County. This county is only the second in the nation named after an African American.

Learn more: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/people-african-american-history/lulu-merle-johnson-1907-1995/

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

The Sioux City Ghosts were an all-black fast-pitch softball team. They started in Sioux City and began touring the United States, Canada, and Mexico during the 1930s, and played until 1956. Because of their pranks on the softball field, they were often compared to the famous Harlem Globetrotters. They were an important part of African-American society in Sioux City during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Learn more: http://www.siouxcityhistory.org/art-a-leisure/125-sioux-city-ghosts

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

The Iowa Federation Home for Colored Girls provided off-campus dormitory-style housing for African American students during a time when the University of Iowa barred them from living on campus and housing was difficult for Black students to find due to racial discrimination. Though the University of Iowa admitted African American students as early as the 1870s and constructed dormitories in the 1910s, they would not allow Black students to live there until 1946.

Learn more: https://www.icgov.org/project/preserving-black-history-iowa-city-tate-arms-and-iowa-federation-home

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

African American engineer, architect, and mathematician Archie Alphonso Alexander was born on May 14, 1888 in Ottumwa, Iowa. With his parents’ help and with earnings from a few part-time jobs, Alexander attended Highland Park College and Cummins Art College in Des Moines before entering the University of Iowa in 1908 to study engineering. He played tackle for the school’s varsity football team, earning the nickname, “Alexander the Great.” During the summers Alexander worked as a draftsman for Marsh Engineers, a Des Moines bridge-designing firm, and in 1912 he received a Bachelor of Science degree, becoming the University of Iowa’s first African American student to complete the engineering program. Alexander obtained his civil engineering degree from Iowa State University in 1925.

Learn more: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/alexander-archie-alphonso-1888-1958/

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

When Duke Slater was 13 years old, his family moved to Clinton, Iowa, after his father became pastor of the A.M.E. church there. In the early 1900s, every high school player needed to provide their own shoes and helmet. His father could not afford both, so he asked his son to choose. Slater decided he needed shoes more, and he played every game at Clinton High School without a helmet. Slater played three seasons of football for Clinton High School from 1913-1915. He was part of two Iowa state championships and the school compiled a 22-3-1 record. Slater played college football at the University of Iowa from 1918 to 1921. Playing tackle on the line, he was a first-team All-American in 1921and a member of the Hawkeyes’ 1921 national championship team. Slater joined the NFL in 1922, becoming the first Black lineman in league history.

- from https://aaregistry.org/story/duke-slater-born/

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Gertrude Durden Rush, born in Navasota, Texas in 1880, moved to Des Moines in 1907 to become the first African-American woman to be admitted to the Iowa Bar. She remained the sole African-American female to practice law in Iowa until the 1950s. Receiving her B.A. from Des Moines University in 1914, Rush began studying law under her husband, James B. Rush, a Des Moines attorney, passing the Iowa Bar Examination in 1918. In 1924, after denial of membership in the American Bar Association, Rush and four other African-American lawyers, who were men, created the National Bar Association, a minority bar association, which officially began in Des Moines in 1925. Rush was a member of the Illinois Bar, maintaining offices both in Des Moines and Chicago, residing in Des Moines. She also held positions in many nationally and community organizations, including president of the Iowa State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs and president of the Des Moines Colored Federated Clubs. She died in 1962. Two monuments in her honor are located at the Des Moines Public Library and St. Paul AME Church. She was inducted into the Iowa Women's Hall of Fame in 1994. - from human rights.iowa.gov

Learn more: https://centraliowamuseum.com/towarduniversalsuffrage/profiles

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Camp Fort Des Moines, Iowa, welcomed its first black recruits for training in May 1917. Of the 1,250 men who entered Camp Fort Des Moines, forty percent were college graduates. Despite their enthusiasm and dedication, training was limited to the infantry and neglected specialized areas such as artillery or engineering. After four months, the camp graduated 204 2nd lieutenants, 329 1st lieutenants, and 106 captains. They were assigned to the 92nd Division, where they faced fierce racial prejudice from many of their white superior officers and white enlisted men. - from the Library of Congress

Learn more: https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/black-officers-fort-des-moines-ww-i

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Buxton coal production peaked during WWI but afterward, mechanization and conversion of train engines to diesel fuel decreased the demand for coal. Several severe fires ravaged the community and the mines. By 1919, Buxton’s population had declined to only 400. The last mine closed in 1927. Residents moved away but fondly remembered their Buxton days. Many African Americans moved to Des Moines or Waterloo. Very little physical evidence of the town remains today. There have been many articles and several books written about this unique African-American experience in rural Iowa. While it is only one of Iowa’s many ghost towns, it is probably the most famous.- from iowaculture.gov

Learn more: https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/great-buxton and https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/buxton-lost-utopia

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

The history of Buxton, Iowa, is unique for its times in that a majority of its residents were African American. The Consolidation Coal Company worked for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. Having a hard time recruiting white miners, Consolidation Coal sent agents to southern states to hire African-American workers. In 1873, it founded the town of Buxton and opened nearby mines. It grew quickly and, according to one source, became the largest coal town west of the Mississippi. In the 1905 census, the town boasted 2,700 African American and 1,991 whites. The town supported African-American doctors, lawyers and other professionals, and an African-American YMCA with a gymnasium, an indoor swimming pool and many programs for Buxton residents. - from iowaculture.gov

Learn more: https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/mypath/great-buxton and https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/buxton-lost-utopia

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

The Iowa State Bystander began in Des Moines on June 8, 1894 with the motto of “Fear God, tell the truth and make money.” According to J.B. Morris, “It was the brainchild of several forward thinking Negroes in Des Moines who realized that the existing daily press left the Negro out in the production of the papers and the news about them generally. Derogatory news always made the headlines.” - from iowapbs,org

Learn more: https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/artifact/iowa-bystander-provides-communication

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

“Frank Holbrook became the first black graduate of Tipton High School and that fall, he enrolled in a few science courses at the nearby University of Iowa. He was steered to Iowa City by several Hawkeye supporters in Tipton, who provided a fund for his tuition and living expenses. Kinney Holbrook joined the Hawkeye football team in 1895, becoming the first African-American athlete in the history of the University of Iowa and the first documented black college athlete in the history of the state.”

Learn more: http://nealrozendaal.com/hawkeyes-revisited/frank-kinney-holbrook/

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Carver was born in Missouri. When Carver was a baby, he, his mother and his sister were kidnapped from the Carver farm by a band of slave raiders and sold in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired a neighbor to retrieve them, but the neighbor only succeeded in finding George. Moses and his wife raised George on their farm in Missouri where he became known as “the plant doctor” to local farmers because of his ability to discern how to improve the health of their gardens, fields and orchards.

He left the farm at age 11 and attended schools around the midwest, putting himself through school and surviving off of the domestic skills he learned from women and families that took him in.

In the late 1880s, Carver befriended a white couple in Winterset, Iowa, who encouraged him to pursue a higher education. He enrolled in Simpson College, a Methodist school that admitted all qualified applicants and initially studied art and piano in hopes of earning a teaching degree. After learning of his interests in plants and flowers, one of his professors encouraged Carver to apply to the Iowa State Agricultural School (now Iowa State University) to study botany.

In 1894, Carver became the first African American to earn a Bachelor of Science degree. Impressed by Carver’s research on the fungal infections of soybean plants, his professors asked him to stay on for graduate studies. In 1896, Carver earned his Master of Agriculture degree and immediately received several offers, the most attractive of which came from Booker T. Washington (whose last name George would later add to his own) of Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) in Alabama.

Learn more: https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/george-washington-carver

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

This statute barred discrimination on the basis of such factors as race, religion, or ethnic background in barbershops, theatres, hotels and on public transportation. In 1892 another law was passed that said discrimination was illegal in restaurants. While Iowa was the fourth state in the country to pass such laws, they were unequally applied across the state.

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Even though the the Iowa Supreme Court had declared in 1868 that Iowa schools could not bar children because of their race or establish separate schools by race, schools across the state continued to bar Black children from attending. At the time, Keokuk had the largest African American population in the state and two Keokuk school desegregation cases were filed in 1875. “In both Smith v. Directors of Independent School District of Keokuk and Dove v. Independent School District of Keokuk, the school district argued that the African American students denied admission—to the elementary school in Smith and to the high school in Dove—were denied because there were no empty seats.124 In each case the trial court found the African American student was refused because of his race, and that if he had been white, he would have been permitted to attend.125 The circuit court’s mandamus orders requiring admission to the schools were unanimously affirmed.”

Source: https://lawreviewdrake.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/clark-reflections-consolidated.pdf

#CelebrateBlackIowahistory

“Emma Coger, a school teacher of mixed race in Quincy, Illinois, was returning on a Mississippi River steamboat from a visit to Keokuk. Though she had a ticket to the first-class dining table, she was forcibly removed by the captain based on a company regulation that restricted first-class dining to whites. Coger filed suit in the Iowa district court, alleging the tort of assault and battery, and won a jury verdict for $250 as damages.

The company argued that it was not excluding the plaintiff from transportation on its boat nor from receiving a meal, but only from the first-class dining area. The Iowa Supreme Court held the steamboat company’s practice was discriminatory, and its unconstitutionality was governed by the Clark holding.

…The court rejected the company’s argument that dining was a “social right” and not protected by the constitution and laws and, in doing so, expressly reinforced the Clark vision of full citizenship equality. The court rejected a minimalist vision of equality, a limited form of protection against discrimination that focuses on inadequacy rather than equality. Coger confirmed that the equality embraced in Clark was not crabbed or limited— it was not second-class citizenship.

The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the verdict.”

Source: https://lawreviewdrake.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/clark-reflections-consolidated.pdf

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Celebrate Black Iowa History: "From 1830 until well after the Civil War, African Americans gathered across the United States and Canada to participate in political meetings held at the state and national levels. A cornerstone of Black organizing in the nineteenth century, these “Colored Conventions” brought Black men and women together in a decades-long campaign for civil and human rights." - from https://coloredconventions.org/

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

Iowa became the first state to desegregate public schools after the Civil War. The 1868 landmark case, Clark v. Board of Directors, outlawed the "separate-but-equal" doctrine that governed schools elsewhere for another 86 years. At the time, the white schools had "globes and charts and competent teachers," and paid teachers $700 to $900 a year, while the black schools did not have those attributes; the pay was $150 to $200 a year, according to a letter Alexander Clark wrote to the Muscatine Journal in 1867. In addition, white schools were located in the city, while black schools were "nearly a mile from many of the small colored children, keeping more than a third of them from school," the letter said.

While the Iowa Supreme Court decision was groundbreaking, it would take longer for schools across the state to assent to the ruling, and more brave people to file litigation to force desegregation.

Learn more: https://www.iowapbs.org/iowapathways/artifact/alexander-clark-and-first-successful-desegregation-case-united-states

#CelebrateBlackIowaHistory

In 1851 Iowa’s State Legislature adopted a law forbidding black and mulatto settlement into Iowa, although current residents were permitted to stay and keep any property they owned. The 1851 law was successfully challenged in district court by Archie P. Webb in 1863, where the judge ruled the exclusionary law violated the Iowa Constitution and its guarantee that "all men are by nature free and independent, and have certain unalienable rights." A year later, the Iowa Legislature repealed the exclusionary law.

Read about the case in Annals of Iowa: https://tinyurl.com/ArchiePWebb

Charlotta Pyles was an abolitionist and worked to get her family and others to freedom. "Many a slave, coming from Kemtucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, found at the gateway into Iowa an enthusiastic member of their own race in the person of Grandma Pyles. She recieved them into her own home, and...helped them make their escape to Canada." - from Mrs. Lawrence C. Jones, "The Desire for Freedom," Palimpsest 8 9 may 1927) 159-162. learn more about Iowa's Underground Railroad: https://blackiowa.org/history-adventures-online.../