Mattye Milton Copeland Flowers was born in Winchester, Kentucky, 10 January 1907 to parents Thomas Henry Copeland, a minister, and his wife, Mamie (aka Mayme) Leonettza Brooks Copeland, a milliner. By September 1925, Mattye was a school teacher at Attucks School in Carbondale, Illinois, the city’s African-American school (The Daily Independent, 1925), which had opened only five years earlier, in 1920, with 5 students (“Carbondale,” n.d.). She was still teaching there at the time of the 1930 census.
She married Walter Albert Flowers between 1930 and 1934. Mattye gave birth to her daughter Patricia in January 1934 in Kentucky according to Kentucky Birth records, though the 1940 census lists Patricia’s birthplace as Iowa. Ms. Flowers was a soror of Alpha Kappa Alpha. She died 31 March 1998 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Iowa State College Thesis Title: The influence of the Jeanes Fund upon Negro rural education in Christian County, Kentucky, 1937
Iowa State University Catalog Record: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/17674
Sources
Photo Credits: Tennessee State Yearbook
The Daily Independent [Murphysboro, Illinois], Sep 4, 1925, p. 3
Carbondale Crispus Attucks HS “Bluebirds.” (n.d.). Illinois glory days. Retrieved from http://www.illinoishsglorydays.com/id396.html
