“We have a long way to go”: H. Councill Trenholm, educational associations, and equity

Abstract

When H. Councill Trenholm wrote that “we have a long way to go”, he fully understood the barriers that African‐Americans faced in securing educational equity in the twentieth century, particularly in the segregated South. He also was keenly aware of the importance of education to community development, human development, and self‐actualisation. Trenholm excelled at building civic capacity by leveraging institutions and organisations. As a teacher, professor, teacher association leader and college president, he had a remarkable career marked by steady progress in strengthening a teacher corps and an institution of higher education, Alabama State, but he also faced crushing disappointments. This case study examines Trenholm’s vision and roles in expanding educational opportunity as the president of a major, state‐funded, segregated college, mobilising support of the National Education Association, nurturing the American Teachers Association, and persuading the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools to agree to review and accredit African‐American colleges and high schools.

Keywords:

• H. Councill Trenholm
• Alabama State College
• African American educators
• teacher associations
• educational equity
• school accreditation

Notes

¹Letter, Trenholm to John W. Davis, January 15, 1929, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

²James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 22–24.

³Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, 1967); H.A. Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967); Linda Perkins, “The History of Blacks in Teaching,” in American Teachers: History of a Profession at Work, ed. Donald Warren (New York: Macmillan, 1989), 344–67.

⁴See Carol F. Karpinski, A Visible Company of Professionals: African Americans and the National Education Associating during the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Peter Lang, 2008) for a discussion of how his activities helped to realign the NEA to its core principles.

⁵Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 278.

⁶Jerome A. Gray, Joe L. Reed, and Norman W. Walton, History of the Alabama State Teachers Association (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1987), 63–66.

⁷His father asked, “Why should not our state normal schools do for the prospective Negro teachers what the white state normal schools are doing for their prospective teachers?” Ibid., 65.

⁸Thelma D. Perry, History of the American Teachers Association (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1975), 57.

⁹Davis, too, was a distinguished and innovative educator who was president of West Virginia Collegiate Institute, the first all‐black school in the nation to be accredited by the North Central Association of College and Secondary schools. In 1929, the institution began conferring college degrees and in 1930 established a Civilian Pilot training Program – the first of its kind for African‐Americans. He was also on the first Board of Directors of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. His association with the NAACP and INC continued until his death in 1980.

¹⁰Letter, Davis to Honorable John V. Abercrombie, state education department, Montgomery Alabama, November 13, 1925. Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

¹¹R.G. Sherer, Subordination or Liberation: the Development and Conflicting Theories of Black Education in Nineteenth Century Alabama (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1977).

¹²Anderson, The Education of Black in the South, 190.

¹³He assumed other influential positions during his career such as statistical secretary of the Alabama State Teachers Association, vice‐president of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, member of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools and member of the Alabama Council on Human Relations. Gray et al., History of the Alabama State Teachers Association, 118–19.

¹⁴See Anderson, The Education of Blacks and Levi Watkins, Fighting Hard: The Alabama State Experience (Detroit: Harlo, 1987).

¹⁵Lincoln Normal School established in 1867 was an antecedent of Alabama State College, which became Alabama State University in 1969.

¹⁶Perry, History of the American Teachers Association, 238.

¹⁷Bullock, A History of Negro Education in the South, 171.

²⁰Ibid.

¹⁸See Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South.

¹⁹Letter, H.C. Trenholm to Davis, January 15, 1929.

²¹M.G. Wiley and M.N. Zald, “The growth and transformation of educational accrediting agencies: An exploratory study in social control of institutions,” Sociology of Education 41, no. 1 (1968): 40.

²²Presentation by President H. Councill Trenholm at the National Association of Collegiate Deans and Registrars in Negro Schools, Professional Organizations in Negro Education, March 11, 1932. Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

²³See Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South; Michael Fultz, “Teacher Training and African American Education in the South, 1900–1940,” Journal of Negro Education 64, no. 2: 196–210; J. Rupert Picott, History of the Virginia Teachers Association (Washington, DC: National Education Association, 1975).

²⁴Trenholm, March 11, 1932.

²⁵See Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1988.

²⁶Perry, History of the American Teachers Association, 165.

²⁷An advisory group designed to work with the NEA included prominent African‐American men and women such as Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded Bethune‐Cookman College. She was the first woman president of the ATA; Fannie C. Williams was a teacher activist in New Orleans and Michigan for decades who established nursery and kindergarten classes for black children.

²⁸Perry, History of the American Teachers Association, 172–73.

²⁹Alan West, The National Education Association: The Power Base for Education (New York: Free Press, 1980), 8–10.

³⁰See Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1988.

³¹Leland Stanford Cozart, A History of the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools 1934–1965 (Charlotte, NC: Heritage Printers, 1967).

³²Ibid., 2.

³³However, black high schools did not become members until 1964.

³⁴The NATCS became the American Teachers Association in 1937.

³⁵Letter Davis to Trenholm, June 11, 1929, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

³⁶Letter Trenholm to Tidwell, June 24, 1929, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

³⁷Only a small percentage of black teachers held “life certificates.” Perry, History of the American Teachers Association, 59.

³⁸Trenholm was Executive Secretary of the ATA, formerly the NATCS, from 1939 to 1950.

³⁹Trenholm, H.C. “The accreditation of the Negro high school”, The Journal of Negro Education 1, no. 1 (1932); 34–43.

⁴⁰The NEA remained a segregated organisation in terms of state affiliates until the 1960s (see Karpinski, A Visible Company of Professionals; Michael Schultz, The National Education Association and the Black Teacher (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1970); Wayne J. Urban, Gender, Race and the National Education Association: Professionalism and Its Limitations (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2000); West, The National Education Association, 1980.

⁴¹While Trenholm saw the larger picture, he also addressed the details. For example, he arranged for transportation to the annual NATCS meeting for Alabama teachers.

⁴²Letter Trenholm to Davis, November 21, 1928, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁴³Assured of financial assistance from the General Education Board if some of the NATCS indebtedness was resolved, the association has a limited amount of time to meet the deadline. Letter, Davis to Trenholm, November 16, 1928, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁴⁴Letter, Davis to Trenholm, November 16, 1928, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁴⁵Memorandum from Trenholm to the Board of Trustees, July 25, 1953, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁴⁶The NATCS became the American Teachers Association (ATA) in 1937.

⁴⁷H.C. Trenholm, “The Role of the Negro Teachers College in Post‐war Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro Education 11, no. 3 (1942): 412–22.

⁴⁸Ibid., 422.

⁴⁹Letter, H.C. Trenholm to Tidwell, June 24, 1929.

⁵⁰In 1962 after his departure, power was decentralided to four units: academic affairs, student affairs, business affairs and development of public relations. Enrolment fluctuated from 1962 to 1972 but overall it doubled in the decade after Trenholm’s departure.

⁵¹By 1954, “For Negroes” was dropped from the college’s name, Alabama State College for Negroes.

⁵²See Watkins, Fighting Hard, 1987.

⁵³Trenholm speech, Alabama Higher Education for Negroes, March, 1949, p. 3.

⁵⁴Ralph Abernathy led one of the protests about the inadequacies of living conditions.

⁵⁵L.D. Reddick, “Critical Review: The Politics of Desegregation,” Journal of Negro Education 31, no. 3 (1962): 414–20.

⁵⁶See Watkins, Fighting Hard.

⁵⁷Trenholm, Sub‐committee, 1949, p. 12.

⁵⁸ Alabama Journal, February 27, 1953.

⁵⁹Anne Permaloff and Carl Grafton, Political Power in Alabama: The More Things Change (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 28.

⁶⁰Ibid., 29.

⁶¹Charles H. Thompson, “The Negro Teacher and Desegregation of the Public Schools,” Journal of Negro Education 22, no. 2 (1953): 99.

⁶²Permaloff and Grafton, Political Power in Alabama: The More Things Change, 28.

⁶³See Adam Fairclough, “‘Being in the field of education and also being a Negro… Seems tragic’: Black teachers in the Jim Crow South,” Journal of American History 1 (2000): 65–91.

⁶⁴One of Patterson’s objectives in pursuing the NAACP was a way to counter desegregationists’ criticism of his inactivity during the Autherine Lucy case. Ibid., 82.

⁶⁵In 1958, the US Supreme Court noting the constitutional right to assembly ruled that the NAACP had a right to keep its membership secret. NAACP v. Alabama 357 US 449.

⁶⁶Letter, Gainer to Hatch, November 28, 1948, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁶⁷NCOSTA consisted of all southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

⁶⁸Montgomery had been the seat of the Confederacy.

⁶⁹In 1949, Robinson was removed from a Montgomery bus for refusing to change her seat.

⁷⁰Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters, America in the King Years, 1954–63 (New York, Touchstone Book – Simon & Schuster, 1988), 131–33.

⁷¹Alabama State College became a university in 1969.

⁷²See http://www.alasu.edu/Asutoday/jan01/alumni/alumni.htm (last accessed September 2003).

⁷³Jo Ann Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 1987), 51. Speech, “The Rewards of Leadership – A Tribute”, John W. Davis. Davis paid special tribute to Portia Trenholm at an ASTA banquet on 19 March 1961. He said, “I have sometimes thought that the wife of a college president was in reality a person doomed to misery, misunderstanding, isolation and blame for all the mistakes of her husband whether or not she knew anything about the mistakes …. She stood behind the scene giving direction for which she received no thanks but which have been followed just the same.” Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁷⁴Cleopatra D. Thompson, The History of the Mississippi Teachers Association (Washington, DC: NEA Teacher Rights and Jackson, Mississippi, Mississippi Teachers Association, 1973), 23.

⁷⁵ Pittsburgh Courier, June 25, 1960.

⁷⁶Branch, Parting the Waters, 280.

⁷⁷Ibid., 281.

⁷⁸Gray et al., History of the Alabama State Teachers Association, 169.

⁷⁹ St. John Dixon et al., Appellants v. Alabama State Board of Education et al., Appellees.

⁸⁰Transcript, Interview with Joe Reed, February 15, 1968, Stanley Smith interviewer, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁸¹Except for Reddick, Jo Ann Robinson and others resigned to “spare Trenholm the agony of his decision.” Branch, Parting the Waters, 312. In addition, Perry notes that the American Association of University Professors, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the NAACP protested his dismissal. Perry, History of the American Teachers Association, 316.

⁸² Mobile Register, June 15, 1963.

⁸³Adam Fairclough, Teaching Equality: Black Schools in the Age of Jim Crow, Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lecture No. 43 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2001), 39–40.

⁸⁴Abernathy was King’s confidant. Andrew M. Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999), 88. Trenholm was also ordained deacon at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church when Martin Luther King, Jr was its pastor. (Letter from M.L. King, Jr, “To Montgomery Pastors,” Vol. 2: Rediscovering Precious Values, July 1951–November 1955. http://www.stanford.edu/group/king/paper...)

⁸⁵Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, 240.

⁸⁶ Negro History Bulletin, May, 1963, 231.

⁸⁷Ibid.

⁸⁸ Pittsburgh Courier, June 25, 1960.

⁸⁹Robert C. Hatch served at Interim President from January 1961 to September 1962. He was succeeded by Levi Watkins who was ASC President until 1981.

⁹⁰ Negro History Bulletin, May 1963.

⁹¹Fairclough, Teaching Equality, 40. Taylor Branch’s account is also sympathetic to Trenholm; Branch, Parting the Waters.

⁹²Hospital records at the time of his death reveal that Trenholm suffered from diabetes, arteriosclerosis and heart disease, Moorland‐Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

⁹³Letter, Carr to Pitts, July 13, 1960, NEA Archives.