Engineering – The Black ISC Student Experience to 1950

Walter Garfield Madison, Jr., was born in Ames, Iowa, on 3 November 1918, the first-born son of parents Walter Garfield Madison (ISC class of 1914), the first licensed Black plumber in the state, and his wife, Gussie Irene Askew Madison. Walter, Jr., graduated from Ames High School in 1936 and enrolled in the Engineering program at Iowa State College. During his time at ISC, he was a member of the Iowa State Players.

He lived at home with his family at 1204 Third Street. His parents housed many Black ISC students there until they moved to live year round in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1942. When he registered for the draft in 1940, Walter, Jr., was listed as self-employed by the W. G. Madison Company of Nashville, Tennessee, where he married Anita Smith. He died 22 August 1985, in Washington, D.C., after a career as an mechanical engineer.

Sources

Photo Credit: Iowa State University. (1938). The Bomb 1938. p. 118. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.lib.iastate.edu/islandora/object/isu:TheBomb_36547#page/192/mode/2up

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.

Tag: Engineering

Madison, Walter G. Jr. (B.S., Engineering, 1940)

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