When I applied for campus work at West Kentucky Industrial College, I was immediately offered a job as second cook, for which I was to receive full board but no cash. This didn’t sound very glamorous on the surface, but it turned out to be a very satisfactory spot.
WKIC was founded by Dr. D. H. Anderson and his wife, Artelia, for the sole purpose of providing opportunity for underprivileged youth. This was a half-century before the government gave any thought to educational programs for less-privileged youngsters or paid any attention to the dropout problem. The school operated for nine years on contributions solicited door-to-door by Dr. Anderson himself, who welcomed any amount from ten cents up, and money earned by Mrs. Anderson as a rural schoolteacher. She commuted to her school daily by bicycle and turned her entire salary over to the operation of the new college.
It was said that Dr. Anderson picked up for campus use every loose brick he saw on the street and every lump of coal that had fallen from a coal truck. He constructed most of the first building with his own hands and built up the enrollment by combing the streets of every small town in that section of the state, recruiting dropouts from street corners, pool rooms, and every other type of dump and dive, appealing to them to return to school and offering them a job to pay their way. Nobody who applied for a job at that school was turned down. All of the work on campus was done by students, and most of the food we ate was grown on the school farm cultivated by students.
In 1912, after nine years of independent operation, Dr. Anderson did what no black man had ever dared to do. He made a personal appearance before the state legislature to argue for the appropriation of funds for a state-supported school for black children in an area where it was sorely needed. The bill to make this school into a state institution failed.
He made another unsuccessful attempt in 1914 and another in 1916. Finally, in 1918 the legislature passed a law making West Kentucky Industrial College a state school with the same rating as the one at Frankfort. By 1938 when the school merged with Kentucky State College, it was reported to be the third-largest Negro junior college in the United States. This growth was attributed to the fact that no prospective student who desired an education was denied an opportunity at WKIC.
The kitchen staff, to which I was assigned, was headed by a paid worker, an adult who served as chief cook. Her duties were to prepare the meats and oversee the entire food-service operation. As second cook, I was in charge of bread and dessert. The third cook, another student, was responsible for cooking vegetables. The second and third cooks were also responsible for cleaning up all the cooking utensils. Two other students called vegetable girls prepared fresh vegetables for cooking as they came in from the farm.
My specific duties consisted of making corn bread every day for the noon meal (dinner) and biscuits every Sunday morning for breakfast. Dessert was served twice a week. I made fruit cobbler every Sunday from apples, peaches, cherries, or blackberries, and a cottage pudding was served every Wednesday. The latter was something I had become expert at making during my so-called home economics class at the Russellville high school many years before.
There had been no requests for a culinary course at WKIC, so none was included in the curriculum. My thinking was that such a course might be instrumental in preparing me to teach home economics one day if the opportunity arose. My roommate, Rosa James, and I went to the dean and requested it—in fact, insisted on it—since the state had equipped the school with a modern kitchen and all the necessary utensils, although there were no funds in the budget for food to use in classes. Rosa and I agreed to buy the food ourselves if we were permitted to eat what we cooked. This was agreeable to all, and Rosa and I set about learning nutrition, menu making, table setting, and proper methods of serving under the instruction of a faculty member, while also cooking only what we wanted to eat.
When the rest of the faculty learned of our expertise, we started getting invitations to help serve at some of their exclusive parties. This was most enjoyable because it gave us an opportunity to visit off campus, a privilege not often granted students during the day and practically never at night. At these functions, we met many interesting people—celebrities, socialites, and famous political and religious leaders. While we received no formal monetary compensation for this “practice work,” we did get tips and a taste of food we would never have had in dormitory life. As our reputation expanded beyond the faculty, we moved up to serving receptions and banquets sponsored by churches and organizations. The experience and good reports for efficiency gained in this work reflected favorably in our grades.
I had missed so much time in school during the past four years that I decided to take every available course to try and make it up, regardless of whether or not I received credit for the overload. One of the additional courses I requested was typing, which was not yet on the curriculum, although the state board of education again had supplied the equipment. The president’s wife, then serving as business manager for the school, arranged for me to learn typing without a tutor, charging me something like a dollar a month for the use of a typewriter. Office work for black women was still practically nonexistent in that section of the country, so I saw no possibility of obtaining a secretarial or typist job at the time. Still, I thought that someday the opportunity might come, and therefore I requested a course in shorthand as well, which was not in the curriculum either. For fifty cents a week, one of my regular teachers, who just happened to know shorthand, agreed to give me two private lessons a week. I had just learned the Gregg characters when I had to drop the lessons because of my heavy workload and meager finances.
Another opportunity grew out of a special assignment from our English professor, who had the entire class write a short essay on a specific subject with the promise that the best one would be published in the Lighthouse, the town’s Negro newspaper. My story was not only selected and published but the editor (the publisher’s wife) was so impressed with my writing that she invited me to visit the office whenever I had spare time and help with the editing, proofreading, and layout as an unpaid apprentice. That experience really put printer’s ink in my veins.
The busy year passed all too swiftly, and as a senior I expected to graduate with the class of 1931. To my disappointment, however, when the dean’s office added up my scattershot credits, it was discovered that I lacked eight hours necessary for graduation. To soften the blow, the dean assured me that I had enough credits to receive another teacher’s certificate, which would allow me to work the next school year, and then earn enough credits in the spring term to graduate with the class of 1932.
This was some consolation, but I still regretted not being able to sit on the platform with the class of 1931 and its distinguished commencement speaker, Congressman Oscar DePriest, the first Negro to sit in the Congress of the United States since Reconstruction. (An Illinois Republican, DePriest was elected to Congress in 1929 and served three terms before being defeated in 1935 by Arthur W. Mitchell, the first black Democratic congressman.) I was sitting in the back of the audience, rather despondent as I enviously watched my classmates walk across the stage and receive their diplomas. When the procession ended, I had a great surprise. My name was suddenly called, and I was invited to the platform. I had no idea what it was all about as I nervously walked all the way from the back of the auditorium to the front with all eyes on me. When I reached the stage, the dean stepped forward and, with quite a bit of pomp and ceremony, presented me with a home economics certificate, the first ever issued by the school and the only one of the year. I was the only student in the entire school who had taken every course offered in the field, including sewing, cooking, domestic art, and even basket weaving. So I was “it.” The special attention focused on me beyond all the members of the graduating class, especially in front of the congressman, sufficiently compensated for my disappointment over not graduating.
When I returned home from WKIC, my father proudly informed me that I had a job waiting in a rural school called New Hope. This was a modern Rosenwald school. Located about eight miles from Russellville, it was one of more than five thousand Negro public and rural schools funded by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald in fifteen southern and Border States. The unique architectural structure of these modern buildings clearly identified them as Rosenwald schools.1 Painted white, New Hope’s was a well-constructed, relatively new building with one large classroom, two cloakrooms, and a kitchen, as well as a large front porch where the children could play games during recess on rainy days. There was no remodeling or redecorating necessary.
Since teaching jobs were still scarce throughout the South, with long waiting lists, and the number of surplus teachers was increasing, I wondered how I had been so fortunate to have a job waiting for me. Then I had my first realization of the power of politics.
My father, who was a highly respected and influential citizen of the county, had thrown his support to the powerful Rhea political machine. As a result, his request to county officials for a job for me was granted immediately, despite the protests of some who had long been on the waiting list.
Kentucky at that time was a forceful Democratic stronghold, and Logan County was fertile Democratic territory. Tom Rhea, the state Democratic boss, was a resident of Russellville in Logan County. He headed the nationally known Rhea machine, which was just as powerful in our state as the well-known Byrd machine was in Virginia, the Crump machine in Tennessee, or the Pendergast machine in Missouri. Whatever Tom Rhea and his followers said was law and gospel in the state of Kentucky and particularly in Logan County. Following my father’s example, I aligned myself with the political machine and became active in the political life of the county, activities that over the years greatly influenced my entire career.