Bibb, Cornelius Connant (B.S., Electrical Engineering, 1925)

Headshot of Cornelius Bibb

Cornelius Connant “Cal” Bibb was born in Alton, IL, in 30 Dec 1900, one of six children born to Scott Nathaniel Bibb, born into slavery in Missouri, and Minnie L. Stokes Bibb, who had been married 23 March 1882. In 1908, when Cornelius was seven, Bibb’s father won a long-fought battle for Black children to be admitted with White children to schools in Alton, IL. The case had been in the courts since 1897, before Cornelius was born, gaining extensive national news coverage for Bibb’s family. Scott Bibb died in 1909, leaving Minnie a widow. By 1915, the family had moved to Ottumwa, IA, where Cornelius could enroll alongside White students and graduate from Ottumwa High School.

During his time at ISC, he lived for a number of semesters in what residents called “The Interstate Club,” an apartment at 226 1/2 Main Street in the Elliott Building. His marriage to Beatrice Jennie Campbell occurred in New York City on 12 May 1941. He was employed by the New York Transit System Power Division and as a machine operator in a refining company. Bibb, a Methodist, died 18 November 1959 in The Bronx, NY. He is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum, Hartsdale, New York.

Sources

Photo Credit: Iowa State University. (1925). Cornelius C. Bibb. [Photograph]. 1925 Bomb, p. 47. Retrieved from  https://n2t.net/ark:/87292/w9n04q

Banning, James Herman (left ISC in 1924)

Headshot of James Herman Banning

James Herman Banning, known as “Herman,” was born on 5 November 1899, in Canton, Oklahoma Territory, the last of four children born to Riley W. Banning, a farmer, and his wife Cora Woods Banning. After moving to Ames in 1919 to attend ISC, he studied Electrical Engineering. Like many of his Black college classmates, Banning worked while attending school and after leaving ISC in 1924 to pursue his dream of becoming a pilot; he operated the J. H. Banning Auto Repair Shop from 1922 to 1928. After catching the flying “bug” in 1920, Banning took flying lessons in Des Moines. He became “the first Black aviator to receive a federal pilot’s license and the first Black pilot to complete a transcontinental flight across the U.S.” (Ames History Museum).

During his time in college, Banning also lived for a number of semesters in what residents called “The Interstate Club,” an apartment at 226 1/2 Main Street in the Elliott Building. While living there, he met fellow Interstate Club resident Frederick D. Patterson (D.V.M. 1923, M.S. 1927). Patterson later wrote about seeing Banning fly when he lived in Iowa, the first time Patterson had seen a Black aviator. This inspiration, along with the likes of Black Aviator Bessie Coleman and others, encouraged Patterson to see the potential for a commercial aviation program at Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), where he became president in 1935. This was the program that produced the famed Tuskegee Airmen of WWII.

Banning left Iowa in 1929 to take a job in Los Angeles, CA, teaching other African American would-be pilots as chief instructor at the newly opened Bessie Coleman Aero Club aviation school. While there he also purchased his biplane, christened “Miss Ames.” A few years later, from 18 September to 9 October 1932, Banning and co-pilot Thomas Cox Allen, completed a coast-to-coast flight from Los Angeles to New York City that secured for these so-called “Flying Hobos” the distinction of being the first African Americans to complete a transcontinental flight. (Moore).

Only a few months later, on 5 February 1933, Banning died in an air crash (aged 33), during an air show in San Diego, CA. As the biography of Banning on the Oklahoma Historical Society website notes, “Because of his color, this experienced pilot was not allowed to fly the plane in the air show. Instead, he had been only a passenger in a plane piloted by an aviation machinist mate second class from the San Diego Naval Air Station” (Moore). Banning is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles, CA.

In fall 2022, the Ames City Council renamed the Ames Municipal Airport the James Herman Banning Ames Municipal Airport in recognition of Banning’s contributions to aviation history and his ties to the Ames community.

Photo courtesy of Philip Hart, University of Massachusetts, Farwell T. Brown Photographic Archive, Ames Public Library. 

Sources

Ames History Museum. “Know History. Build a Better Future,” Ames History Museum, https://ameshistory.org/content/know-history-build-better-future.

Moore, Bill. “Banning, James Herman,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BA042.

Jones, Mae Bell Arrington Phillips (M.S., Home Economics, 1931)

Headshot of Mae Bell Arrington Phillips

Mae Bell Arrington Phillips was born 2 April 1900, in Bueinck County, Alabama, to Jim Phillips and Minnie Arrington. She received her undergraduate degree at Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College (now Prairie View A & M University) in 1926. That same year she became an Associate Professor of Household Arts at the school. Arrington Phillips was a member of the Alpha Omicron Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Following her time at Prairie View, Arrington Phillips began teaching at West Virginia State College, where she taught Home Economics and eventually rose to Director of the Home Economics Department.

She married Dr. Joseph Robinson Jones on 9 September 1935, but her husband died shortly after their union in 1939. Mae Bell Arrington Phillips died on 1 April 1988.

Sources

Photo Credit: Prairie View A&M University (1926). The Prairie, 1926 (p. 33). Retrieved from  https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=yearbooks 

Alexander, Joseph McHenry (M.S., Animal Husbandry, 1930)

Headshot of Joseph McHenry Alexander

Joseph McHenry Alexander was born in Hickston, Texas, 22 March 1895, to Wiley J. Alexander and his wife Maggie L. James Alexander. Following service as a corporal in the 165th Depot Brigade in WWI, in which he served from 17 July 1918 until 13 December 1918 (“Alexander,” 1942), Alexander married Josephine V. L. Ford in 1921. 

Alexander completed his undergraduate degree at Prairie View Normal & Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University) and had become a Professor of Animal Husbandry, teaching in the Agriculture Department there, by 1926. At that time, four of the seven professors in the Agriculture Department—Edward Evans, Rufus Atwood, Lawrence Potts, and John Lockett—were ISC alumni, and Joseph Alexander was soon to be among them as another faculty member with an ISC degree. To enhance his credentials, Alexander completed an M.S. in Dairy Husbandry at Iowa State College in 1930. During Winter 1930, he lived at 1204 Third Street, the home of Walter Madison, Sr.  

J. M. Alexander was a proud alumnus of Prairie View and an active member of the campus community during his time there as a professor. He served as the local alumni chapter secretary and was adviser to the Prairie View Cosmopolitan Club, as well as Texas state representative to that national organization.

Alexander was still a Professor at Prairie View when he died of a coronary occlusion at the age of 46 on 18 August 1941 (“Joseph M. Alexander,” 1941). In February 1950, he had passed from recent memory to attain a sort of legendary status when he was fondly remembered by the “Prairie View Week,” a campus newsletter, as “a man of impeccable, integrity; indeed, … a man’s man” (“Official Announcement,” p. 1), who was instrumental in securing a new Hammond organ for the school in his role as faculty representative of the Sunday school: “Like so many other self-effacing men who serve causes with basic human humility, he shepherded the dollars and cents which made up the Organ Fund” (“Official Announcement,” 1950, p. 1). The newsletter writer goes on to capture his careful efforts to serve his school as the : “Bald of pate, solid of statue (sic) one remembers Mr. Alexander depositing the pennies and nickels contributed by men and women of the school on the hill, and ever so often withdrawing the quarterly payments” (“Official Announcement,” 1950, p. 1).

Joseph McHenry Alexander is buried in the Mount Eden Cemetery, Hickston, Texas (“Alexander,” 1942). Following his death, a new men’s dormitory at Prairie View, completed in 1952, was named in Alexander’s honor.

Iowa State College thesis title: The productive life span of the dairy cows, and some factors influencing its length

Iowa State University Library permalink: https://iowa-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/12tutg/01IASU_ALMA21178043330002756

Sources

Photo credit: Prairie View A&M University. (1926). J. M. Alexander, B.S. [Photograph]. 1926 The prairie, p. 32. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/yearbooks/33/  

Alexander, Joseph McHenry, application for headstone or marker. (1942, 16 Jan). U.S., headstone applications for military veterans, 1925-1963. National Archives Microfilm Publication M1916, M2113, Roll 40050_644066_0359. Retrieved from Fold3 https://www.fold3.com/image/317790269?terms=mchenry,joseph,alexander 

Joseph M. Alexander, death certificate. (1941, 21 Aug). Texas, U.S., death certificates, 1903-1982 [database on-line]. Retrieved from Ancestry https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/23508958:2272?

Official announcement – February 5 – February 11 – 1950. (1950, Feb.). The Prairie View Week, Vol. 6 (5). Prairie View A&M University. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.pvamu.edu/pv-announcement/105

Aldridge, Aubrey Cooper (B.S., Animal Husbandry, 1923)

Headshot of Aubrey Cooper Aldridge

Aubrey Cooper Aldridge was born in Prairie View, Texas, on 20 January 1902, to H. C. Aldridge and Ida Cooper Aldridge. During his time at ISC, he lived for a number of semesters in what residents called “The Interstate Club,” an apartment at 226 ½ Main Street in the Elliott Building. Other residents of the apartment in the early 1920s included J. Herman Banning, Frederick Patterson, Rufus Atwood, Cornelius Bibb, Compton Chapman, James Fraser, John Lockett, Jesse Otis, Lawrence Potts, Clarence Smith, Malcolm Stubblefield, and John Sweatt. While living there, Aldridge lent his baritone voice to a musical group of Interstate Club residents that sang at local events in the early 1920s (“Ames Items”). During his time at ISC, he was also recorder for the Alpha-Nu Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha in 1923, belonging alongside Iowa State brothers John “Jack” Trice, Jesse Otis, Frederick Patterson, Lawrence Potts, John Lockett, James Fraser, and Rufus Atwood (Aldridge, 1923).

After graduation, Aldridge went on to get his teaching certificate at the University of Southern California and Master’s of Science at Arizona State College. Aldridge married Robinez Erma Robinson in Los Angeles, California, in 1927 and they had a daughter, Betty Jean, in 1928. In 1943 he married Winstona Hackett, daughter of prominent Phoenix parents (her father was the first African American doctor in Arizona), in Phoenix, Arizona. They had one son, Aubrey Cooper Aldridge, Jr.

Aldridge, Sr., taught at Dunbar Elementary and then became Principal there. Later in his career, he became Principal at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary, working there until his retirement in 1967. He passed away in Phoenix, Arizona, 23 June 1995.

Sources

Photo credit: Aubrey Aldridge [Photo]. (n.d.) Ancestry. Retrieved from https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/10312558/person/-653532351/media/5d900701-5bcf-4e2e-adec-c6aef308f761

Aldridge, A. C. (1923, June). “Alpha Nu Chapter State College of Iowa, Des Moines, Iowa.” The Sphinx, 9.3, p. 17.  https://issuu.com/apa1906network/docs/192300903 

Ames items. (1920, January 30). The Iowa state bystander. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers Site. Retrieved from https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85049804/1920-01-30/ed-1/seq-4/

 

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