A Young Black Woman Documents Her College Experiences Deep in Jim Crow Texas

[Women]: [African Americana]: [Texas]: Johnson, Estella V. Sales:

[Manuscript Memory Book and Scrapbook Compiled by an African American Woman Studying at Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College Just After the First World War, Including a Series of Diary-Style Entries, and Numerous Inscriptions by Classmates].

Prairie View, TX: 1919-1920. [92]pp. of ink manuscript, plus eighteen photographs and seven ephemeral items on an additional [11]pp. Original scrapbook, 12.25 x 8.5 inches. Ownership inscription on front pastedown reading, "Estella V. Sells, Prairie View College, May 17, 1920." A well-used personal scrapbook, with binding loose with cover nearly detached, covers worn with mild staining, pages toned and occasionally chipped along margins, fading to ink entries along edges of pages, though nearly all content legible with care. Good condition. Item #12840

A wonderful scrapbook compiled by Estella Sells Johnson (1897-1900), a young African American woman studying at Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College (now Prairie View A & M University), documenting her time there in 1919 and 1920. Johnson was born in Jasper County, Texas, to Watkin and Matilda Sells. She was the 1918 valedictorian of her class at the segregated Jasper High School, and enrolled at Prairie View that same year through the summer of 1920. In 1920, she married Reverend Napoleon Johnson, shortly thereafter giving birth to her two children. She was finally able to complete her undergraduate degree in 1936 and earned a master's degree in education in 1950. Throughout all this she continued to work in the Jasper school system in a career that lasted forty-six years, until retiring in 1966. The scrapbook is accompanied by a copy of her institutionally unrecorded family-published autobiography, The Responsibilities of a Christian Life (published 1990), as well as a photograph of her from later in life.

The eighteen photographs in the scrapbook consist of portraits of peers around campus, some captioned, as well as a photograph of the Prairie View band and a candid photo of the Samuel Huston College HBCU football team. Ephemera includes an alumni banquet invitation, a musical program for chapel services, a program for a senior class pageant, a commencement day program with laid-in college song lyrics, an orchestra program, a commencement sermon program, and a calling card. Several of the programs appear to have been trimmed, possibly from larger leaflets.

The scrapbook also contains forty pages of inscriptions and autographs from classmates and faculty at the school, some quite detailed and heartfelt. An additional fifty-two handwritten pages, meanwhile, provide densely written, detailed descriptions of events at the school, plus personal anecdotes, inside jokes, poems, class songs and slogans, quotations by classmates and faculty, as well as entries describing Estella's own feelings regarding life at school. Many of the pages contain diary-style descriptions of events at the school, including banquets, dances, recitals, and a sports meet with Bishop College. One five-page entry narrates a visit by famed African American missionary Max Yergan to the campus under the auspices of the YMCA, as well as lectures and a sermon given at the same conference by Channing Heggie Tobias. Her description reads in part: "Friday night Mr. Max Yeargan Missionary to India and Africa, gave a series of stereopticon Views with lectures. These views treated of the conditions existing in those countries, modes of living customs and great preponderance of illiteracy. Especially interesting was his account of of his experiences and adventures in traveling.... Doctors and nurses are few for the large population, and consequently a large number of inhabitants die for the want of medical attention. He expressed his hope that in response to the call of a needy people there would be those in America Texas, and even Prairie View who would answer willing. Mr. Yeargan is planning to return to Africa in the early fall and solicits the support of all well-wishers. Over $300 was subscribed by friends to aid him in this work."

Mr. Yeargan is a wide awake young Christian worker and is giving his life to this service for the betterment of humanity. His life is in truth worthy of emulation. At the platform meeting on Saturday Mr. Channing H. Tobias, International Secretary, New York, was presented and gave a very masterly discussion on "The Church" telling of the purpose of the Church from its early establishment and its rightful place in the World's program. He emphasized the fact that the Church was the nucleus around which all life was centered and when men would come to a realization of this then it would be that conditions would assume a normal state and mean for the reestablishment of a Christian era.

Another two page entry, meanwhile, gives an account of the 1919 observance of National Negro Health Week held at the college: "Dr. Osborn next introduced Dr. J.M. Franklin, resident physician, who discussed the knowledge of medicine among Negroes, and what is being done to improve the faculties for handling disease among colored people as well as increasing advantage for Negroes to acquire training in the medical profession…and laid a deal of emphasis on the fact that the time is (here?) when people will not even patronize a doctor because he happens to be black unless he can deliver the goods."

A third entry, covering two pages, describes a visit to campus by sociologist Franklin H. Giddings. Other pages contain an essay titled "Ideals for Girls," inspirational poetry titled "Life" and "It Can Be Done," a lost and found "Advertisement" ("lost a precious lad about 4 1/2 feet tall"), a heartfelt entry on receiving a gift from a "home girl," quotations from faculty ("Miss Bass 'This is the biggest mess I even seen its so bad'"), and more. Other humorous entries include an anecdote about accidentally locking "Miss Williams" in a room, a sketch titled "this scene open with a Negro in a court room who had filed complaint against his wife for rocking him to sleep," a dialogue between "Prof Butler" and "Dean Griggs," and a humorous anecdote by "Dean Reynolds" about seeing "one of my white friends coming down the same street, in a big Nash Six sitting like he had conquered the whole world," and being told "Uncle aren’t you tired of walking...why don't you run for a while." Finally, a comic song titled "The Twenty-Third Psalm of the Flunkers" reflects the anxieties of college life: "The twenty-third psalm of the flunkers. The teachers are my shepherds, I shall not want... The leaders me resides the classics... I fear my studies far zeroes demerits and even a ticker for home may not comfort me...."

OCLC locates a single printed yearbook from Prairie View that was published in 1917, with 1926 as the next recorded year. The present volume, combining elements, of a diary, scrapbook, and yearbook, thus fills a gap in the history of the institution, while also providing detailed personal insights of a young African woman attending college in Texas during a period of intense Jim Crow segregation.

Price: $4,500