Geneva Pensola Crouch was born 23 February 1902 in Cherokee County, Texas, to George Washington “Clyde” Crouch and Mary “Carrie” Ragsdale Crouch. She attended Iowa State College, where she graduated with a Master of Science in Home Economics Education in 1931. Her brother Hubert B. Crouch also attended Iowa State in the 1930s. She and her brother Hubert Crouch were two of the many Black ISC students who resided with Archie and Nancy Martin at their home at 218 Lincoln Way. In the 1930 census, when listed at home in Smith, Texas, with her parents and siblings, Geneva is a “teacher” at the “college”; Texas College, a private, historically black Christian Methodist Episcopal college, was located in Tyler.
In the late 1920s, she left Texas College for Prairie View Normal & Industrial School (now Prairie View A& M University). By 1931, she had become an instructor of Clothing and Handicraft at Prairie View. She married Wilk S. Peters on 3 September 1932. When her husband moved to Virginia in 1933 to gain a library degree at Hampton Institute, Geneva stayed at Prairie View to teach. By 1935, according to the Federal Census, she was no longer employed. By the 1940 Federal Census, she was living with Wilk Peters in Langston, Oklahoma, where he was librarian at Langston University, the only HBCU in Oklahoma. In 1948, Wilk landed a job at Tuskegee Institute, and they moved to Alabama. She and her husband next moved to Baltimore in 1950 when Mr. Peters became librarian at Morgan State College, another HBCU. In 1958, her employment appeared in the Baltimore City Directory as public school teacher. Geneva Crouch Peters died 27 November 1993 in Baltimore, Maryland.
Iowa State College Dissertation Title: Amount of waste, time required and cost in the preparation of fresh vegetables for institutional use, 1931
Iowa State University Catalog Record:https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/17759
Sources
Biography available at HBCU Connections at Iowa State University : Geneva Crouch ( http://hbcuconnections.iastatedigital.org/Geneva_Crouch )
