Benjamin Harrison Crutcher was born 6 August 1890 in Harrodsburg City, Kentucky, to Silas Crutcher, a plasterer and sometime clergyman, and his wife, Anna (aka Ann or Anne) M. Worrell Crutcher. On 26 April 1918, Benjamin enlisted in the Army. He was discharged 5 July 1919. Crutcher graduated from Tuskegee Institute, Florida A & M College in Tallahassee, Florida, and Iowa State College, where he earned a B.S. in Dairy Foods and Industry in 1925 and an M.S. in Dairy Husbandry and Comparative Physiology in 1931. When Crutcher earned his B.S. in 1925-26, he was one of only 13 Black regular session students at ISC (“A Record,” 1926). His classmates included Compton Chapman, Maurice Thomasson, and Willa Juanita Ewing.
Crutcher married Cleopatra Baker in 1922, while taking some time off from college coursework. As an Iowa State undergraduate, in 1924-25, Crutcher roomed at 2522 Chamberlain, with Holloway Smith, Thomas Whibby, and Harold Tutt.
In 1935, as a Dairyman at Tuskegee Institute, he was listed as an attendee at the banquet held by the Iowa State Alumni Association for Frederick D. Patterson’s inauguration as President of Tuskegee. By 1942, he was Head of the Animal Husbandry Department and assistant to the Director of Agriculture at Georgia State College, Savannah. In a second career, Crutcher worked as a medical technologist for the Veterans Administration in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he died on 3 August 1981. At the time of his death, Crutcher, age 91, was the oldest active member of the Alpha Nu Lambda Chapter (Tuskegee) of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity (“Omega Chapter,” 1981).
Iowa State College Dissertation Title: The animal parasites of the woodchuck (Marmota monax L.) with special reference to the protozoa, 1936
Iowa State University Catalog Record:https://quicksearch.lib.iastate.edu/permalink/01IASU_INST/174tg9m/alma990007117870102756
Sources
A record of the Negro at college 1926. (1926, August). The crisis: A record of the darker races, p. 174.
Omega chapter. (1981, Fall). Sphinx 67. p. 82.
