Addie Lee Ross earned a master’s degree in Home Economics Education from Iowa State College in 1932. After graduation, she became a faculty member of the home economics department at Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University) in Texas.
Iowa State College Dissertation Title: Development of the vocational home economics program for negroes in Mississippi, 1932
Maurice Ethan Thomasson was born 5 May 1892 in Monticello, Arkansas, the son of James E. Thomasson, a shop owner, and Isabella Brooks Thomasson. After studying at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, Maurice earned a Bachelor’s degree from Iowa State College in 1926. At that time, Thomasson was one of only 13 Black regular session students at ISC (“A Record,” 1926). He graduated along with classmates Compton Chapman, Benjamin Crutcher, and Willa Juanita Ewing.
followed by a Master’s degree in sociology from the University of Minnesota and a doctoral degree from Columbia University. Thomasson became a faculty member at Johnson C. Smith University, an HBCU in Charlotte, North Carolina, after earning his doctorate. In 1941, He took up his post at the Delaware State College for Colored Students (now Delaware State University).
Thomasson married La Verne Boyer on 4 June 1947, the year that his employing institution became known as Delaware State College. He and his wife taught sociology at the school, Delaware’s only HBCU, from the 1940s through the 1960s. After turmoil at the college surrounding student dissatisfaction regarding campus infrastructure that was unable to support the influx of World War II veterans on the G.I. Bill, Thomasson was appointed to serve as acting president of the college in 1949. He returned to his position as faculty head of sociology studies after the hiring of a new president in 1950 but was appointed a second time as acting president in mid-1951, the college wanting to tap him permanently for the role. Thomasson, however, turned down the offer, stating his desire to teach. (Holmes, 2014)
During this second term as Acting President, in 1952, Thomasson was called upon to testify at a landmark Delaware integration trial that considered consolidated court cases Gebhart v. Belton and Bulah v. Gebhart. Thomasson’s “sociological perspective” on segregated schools was recorded in the trial transcript:
I don’t think that in a segregated situation it is possible to produce a person who is fully normal, completely satisfactory. There are some conditions inherent in the segregated situation that just simply warp a person’s personality. Now, for one thing a person who goes to school in a segregated school goes to that school by virtue of the fact that the State of which he is a part has said he is inferior. That is, the State has embodied that in the law, and the law has been sustained by the courts. He is told as he goes there the school segregated by law that he is inferior. (Holmes, 2014).
Donald Evans, a former student of Thomasson’s, remembered his former professor’s demeanor as unsuited to being a president of a university: “He was a very nice man, but I don’t think he had the personality to be a (permanent) president of a University” (quoted in Holmes, 2014). For the rest of his academic career, Thomasson taught sociology before retiring from teaching in 1967.
He died on 8 September 1973 and was buried in Odd Fellows Cemetery in Smyrna, Delaware. Delaware State University’s Thomasson Hall and Maurice Thomasson Center are named after him.
Sources
Photo credit: A record of the Negro at college 1926. (1926, August). The crisis: A record of the darker races, p. 187.
A record of the Negro at college 1926. (1926, August). The crisis: A record of the darker races, p.174.
Holmes, Carlos. (2014, Feb. 12). Dr. Maurice Thomasson carried on work during trying times, declined permanent president post. Delaware State University, Dept. of Human Ecology [Blog]. Accessed 12 Dec. 2021. [No longer available.]
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
