admin – Page 21 – The Black ISC Student Experience to 1950

August 2, 2022February 8, 2023

Jackson, Rufus Benjamin (Left ISC in 1917)

Rufus Benjamin Jackson was born in Buffalo, Wyoming on 12 July 1896. His parents were John Jackson, a member of the Buffalo Soldiers of the U.S. Army, and Mary Jane Wilson Jackson. After moving with his family a number of times in childhood to accommodate his father’s Army service, Rufus graduated from East High School in 1914, the only Black student in his class (“Rufus Benjamin Jackson,” 2021).

He started his education at Iowa State College before he enrolled in the Army to fight in WWI. During WWI, he became a war hero and served with distinction, receiving the Distinguished Service Cross. His act of heroism was on 28 September 1918 near Farm La Foile, France. He acted bravely and made a personal reconnaissance as he crawled into enemy lines to find machine gun nests that were blocking his unit’s advancements. He used Stokes mortars to clear these nests, allowing for his unit to advance. (“Rufus Benjamin Jackson,” 2021).

Following his service in WWI, he married Leona Miller on 5 March 1918, in Houston Texas, but the couple later divorced. He died on 31 March 1992 in Detroit, Michigan, and is buried at the Ft. Custer National Cemetery in Augusta, Michigan. (“Rufus Benjamin Jackson,” 2021).

Sources

Photo Credit The Cardinal Tales

Rufus Benjamin Jackson. (2021). George S. Robb Centre for the Study of the Great War. Park University. Retrieved from https://gsr.park.edu/service_members/rufus-benjamin-jackson/

August 2, 2022April 26, 2023

Evans, Edward Bertram (D.V.M., 1918)

Based on research by Brad Kuennen, Iowa State University Vet Med and Animal Science Librarian

From Kansas City, MO.

Edward Bertram Evans was born in Kansas City, Missouri, son of Edward G. Evans I and Ada M. Howard Evans, on 10 May 1894, according to his WW I Draft Card.

Evans and Samuel A. Richardson hold the distinction of being the second and third Black graduates from the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, graduating in the class of 1918. Evans served as 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I. He was also a member of the Veterinary Medical Society as a student.

After his graduation from Iowa State, Evans returned to his native Texas where he was hired as a veterinarian and instructor at Prairie View A&M College (now University) northwest of Houston where he established a Veterinary Medicine Department. It was at Prairie View where Evans became a mentor to Frederick Douglass Patterson and encouraged him to pursue veterinary medicine at Iowa State.

He was the first licensed Black veterinarian in Texas. (According to the State Fair of Texas Agriculture Hall of Honor https://bigtex.com/supporting-texans/agriculture/hall-of-honor/). In 1941, he was put in charge of all Black extension work in Texas.

In 1945, when Patterson was president of Tuskegee University, he called upon Evans to assist in establishing a veterinary school. Evans served as the first Dean of the Tuskegee School of Veterinary Medicine before being called back the following year to serve as Prairie View’s eighth president, serving in this role from 1946 to 1967.

Evans was a national leader in extension work at historically black colleges and universities. He led the development of a national school at Prairie View to train Black county and home agents and other extension workers for the South. He reorganized Prairie View in 1951, expanding it into a full Land Grant college. Evans served as a State Department Point IV consultant in 1952 and 1953 where he helped develop a program for livestock disease control and greater food production in North Africa and the Middle East. For all these accomplishments and more, Evans was one of two men named Progressive Farmer magazine’s 1953 Man of the Year in Service to Southern Agriculture.

Edwards B. Evans passed away on 3 July 1976 in Houston, TX, and is buried in Prairie View, TX, where his career began.

Sources

Photo Credit: Prairie View A&M University (1926)

1926 The Prairie(p.32)

Biography available at HBCU Connections at Iowa State University : Edward B. Evans ( http://hbcuconnections.iastatedigital.org/Edward_B._Evans )

https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=yearbooks

August 2, 2022February 27, 2023

Chapman, Compton Vatell (B.S., Engineering, 1926)

Compton V. Chapman was born in Buxton, Iowa, on 4 February 1896 to John J. Chapman and Willie J. James Chapman. An original member of the “Interstate Club” at 226 ½ Main Street, Chapman was one of only 13 Black regular session students at ISC when he graduated with his B.S. in Civil Engineering in 1926 (“A Record,” 1926). His classmates included Benjamin Crutcher, Maurice Thomasson, and Willa Juanita Ewing. Chapman lived in Des Moines most of his life where he was a member of the Corinthian Baptist Church. In 1917 when he registered for the draft, Chapman was working as a janitor for the Western Union Telegraph Company. In World War I, he was a US Army Sergeant and member of the American Legion Post 126. In 1935, he worked as a general contracting engineer in Des Moines. In the same year, Chapman attended a Iowa State Alumni Association banquet celebrating the inauguration of Frederick D. Patterson as President of Tuskegee Institute.

He is noted for working at the Des Moines Waterworks, where he worked until his retirement. Married to Cora Chapman, he died on 10 April 1980 and was buried in Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa.

Sources

Photo Credit Obituary

A record of the Negro at college 1926. (1926, August). The crisis: A record of the darker races, p. 174.

August 1, 2022May 10, 2023

Brantley, Charles L. (left ISC in 1926)

Charles Lee Brantley was born 25 Nov 1891 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Mack Brantley, a formerly enslaved and Esibell Londie Dickson Brantley. Charles served as a Private in Company H of the 806th Pioneer Infantry in 1919. Not long before his enlistment, he married Nevada Doris Lewis Brantley on 18 August 1918; however, at the time of his draft registration in 1917, he claimed he already had a wife and child to support. The couple divorced in 1931. In 1926, Charles attended Iowa State College. During that time he resided at 200 ½ Main Street. Charles Lee Brantley died on 3 March 1966 and was buried in Detroit Memorial Park.

August 1, 2022February 8, 2023

Bowman, James Everett (Attended ISC, Veterinary Science Program, 1940-1944)

James Everett Bowman was born to Floyd and Adelaide Bowman in Des Moines, Iowa, on 25 October 1922 and graduated from North High School in 1940. While at Iowa State he lived at various locations in Ames: 218 Lincoln Way (1940-1941), 2512 ½ Lincoln Way (1941-1942), and 117 Welch Avenue (Fall 1942).

Like other men of his day, he registered for the draft, but according to his story, he was told that since there were so few Negroes in college, as long as he kept his grades up, they wouldn’t send him to war. However, Bowman said he still felt the need to serve: “‘I’d go to church and see my friends’ parents and they’d say, “Jimmy what are you still doing here? My son is over there getting shot at.” Well, I got to thinking about that and decided I wanted to carry my load. I was thinking, “well, I do want to fly an airplane”‘” (“James Everett Bowman,” 2019).

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which he heard about while in the ISC library, Bowman continued to think about enlisting or at least doing his part in the war effort. He left his study of Biology at Iowa State and worked at the Des Moines Ordnance Plant for a time as a janitor, then as a chemist at the Ford plant. He finally entered the Army Air Corps in 1943 at Camp Dodge, Iowa, and was sent to Biloxi, Mississippi, for his training. He survived a plane crash in South Carolina before going on to complete his Class 44-K-SE Tuskegee Airmen training on February 1, 1945, becoming a flight officer. Bowman didn’t see battle because the war ended just a few months later, but his success helped prove that Blacks were capable of piloting aircraft.

Upon returning to Des Moines, Bowman obtained a B.S. from Drake University. Turned away by Des Moines schools in 1947, he taught education and psychology at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, while obtaining a master’s degree there in 1949. Later, he returned to Des Moines and taught science at Weeks Middle School and completed his doctorate at Drake in 1975. He took on administrative roles in the district and eventually become the first Black Assistant Superintendent of Instruction for Des Moines Public Schools. Active in a number of community organizations, Bowman also lectured nationally on multicultural education, black history, and the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen.

With his wife, Gloria, the two raised two daughters, Linda and Gale. Linda (Bowman) Lane was also a former Des Moines schools administrator. Bowman died on 13 January 2014, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

Sources

Photo Credit: https://cafriseabove.org/james-everett-bowman/

James Everett Bowman. (2019, June 6). CAF Rise Above. https://cafriseabove.org/james-everett-bowman/