All Student Biographies

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Archer, Eleanor Rebecca Powell (B.S., Textiles and Clothing, 1941)

Eleanor Rebecca Powell  was born in Des Moines, IA, on 23 December 1918 to Roy Estill (aka “Estelle”) Thanel Powell and his wife Jeanne Payton. At the time, Roy Powell was employed in the home of Dr. Oliver J. Fay, a local surgeon and ISC alumnus married to Helen Louise Knapp, daughter of one-time ISC President Seaman A. Knapp (Zehner, 2004). When Eleanor was still young, her parents divorced, and Eleanor lived with her grandparents, her mother and stepfather, Clyde Morris, in Des Moines. She graduated from North High School in 1936. She opted to enter Iowa State College in home economics that fall.

Once she began attending ISC, Ms Powell first lived at the home of the Walter Madison family at 1204 Third Street. Word around campus had reached Eleanor that Mrs. Madison “on Third St. and Hazel Avenue  in Ames…rented rooms to students of color for $3 a week” (Taylor, 2001, p. 48). Eleanor later lived with John and Nellie Shipp at 118 Sherman Avenue and, finally, with a White roommate at 153 Hyland Avenue. 

During her undergraduate years, Eleanor also established a lifelong friendship with Eva Dixon, another African American ISC student. According to Kay Ann Taylor, who has written a biographical dissertation on Ms. Powell,  “One of the graduate females, Eva Dixon, was there [at ISC] to complete her master’s degree in home economics education. Eva and Eleanor belonged to the same sorority [Delta Sigma Theta] and Eva was instrumental in assisting Eleanor with her successful application for her first job with the National Youth Administration (NYA) in Kansas City after graduation from Iowa State [in 1941].” (Taylor, 2001, p. 54). 

The NYA position involved supervising and teaching other young women in the sewing of dresses, but it lasted only four and a half months. By the end of December, the New Deal program had been phased out and Eleanor was left unemployed, returning home to Des Moines to live with her parents. Though she had never planned to teach, she saw that as an opportunity. While working evening shifts in early 1942 at Des Moines’s Boyt Harness Factory, Eleanor took education courses at Drake to ensure she could be licensed. Following her licensure, she applied to numerous positions and was finally employed at “Georgia Normal 

College, which became Albany State College the following year. She was offered a 12-month contract at a salary of $ 1200 a year (Taylor, 2001,p. 75). Although experiencing trepidation about teaching at a segregated school in the Jim Crow South, Eleanor enjoyed teaching and heading up the clothing and art department, for the 1942-43 school year despite the problematic sanitation system on campus and the ever-present mosquitoes that brought malaria with them (Taylor, 2001).

From Georgia Normal, for the 1943-44 school year, Eleanor moved to better pay for a home economics faculty position at Paine College in Augusta, Georgia. She became part of an integrated faculty at the historically Black college. The summer after teaching at Paine, she joined family in Salt Lake City, Utah, and took a job as a secretary for the segregated United States Organization (U.S.O.) Catholic division. (Taylor, 2001).

Following this summer job, Eleanor took up her first high school teaching position at a high school she had respected since learning about it in college. According to Taylor, “Sumner High School, the only all Black segregated school in Kansas, required its teachers to have two years of teaching experience in addition to a masters degree” (2001, p. 82). Although hired to teach at Sumner, Elanor first had to cover seventh, eight, and ninth grade clothing classes for a year (1944-45) at Northeast Junior High School, filling in for a teacher on leave. When she finally began her nine years of teaching at Sumner in fall 1945, Eleanor taught clothing and family living, later focusing on clothing only. While teaching, she completed her M.A. in Textiles and Clothing by doing summer classes (1946-49) at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York City. 

In 1951, Eleanor met Jean N. Archer, a D.V.M. alumnus of ISC (1949), on a trip home to Des Moines. She and Archer, a Haitian, married on 30 May 1954 in St Ambrose Catholic Cathedral in Des Moines, but they had to hold the reception in the downtown YMCA at 9th and High. As Taylor explains, “In 1954, as in the years before and following, practices of discrimination were the rule and Blacks were barred from using the hotels and most other facilities that were controlled and owned by the White population sector” (Taylor, 2001, pp. 106-7). The marriage meant the end of Eleanor’s employment at Sumner, which did not allow female instructors to marry. The couple moved to Chicago in June 1954, where Jean was stationed in the U.S. Army. He gained his American Citizenship shortly after their arrival (Taylor, 2001). 

After time as a military family stationed in Japan, Eleanor, Jean and their children returned to the US in the wake of troop reductions. The family stayed with Eleanor’s parents in Des Moines, and in 1958 Eleanor returned to Iowa State to work on updating her Iowa teaching credentials during summer session. She completed that credentialing in 1960 and took a job at Amos Hiatt Junior High School in Des Moines. Eleanor taught there until 1978, with Jean taking a series of jobs around the country in his field. The couple eventually divorced in 1976. In 1978, Eleanor took the job that she would hold for 14 years, until her retirement in 1982: teaching home economics at Callanan Junior High School in Des Moines.

After time as a military family stationed in Japan, Eleanor, Jean and their children returned to the US in the wake of troop reductions. The family stayed with Eleanor’s parents in Des Moines, and in 1958 Eleanor returned to Iowa State to work on updating her Iowa teaching credentials during summer session. She completed that credentialing in 1960 and took a job at Amos Hiatt Junior High School in Des Moines. Eleanor taught there until 1978, with Jean taking a series of jobs around the country in his field. The couple eventually divorced in 1976. In 1978, Eleanor took the job that she would hold for 14 years, until her retirement in 1982: teaching home economics at Callanan Junior High School in Des Moines. (Taylor, 2001). Until her death 23 March 2013, Eleanor continued to be active in her community and church organizations. Her obituary in the Des Moines Register (31 March 2013) sums up her involvement, “For many years Eleanor was active with numerous organizations, including Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., Alpha Delta Kappa sororities and NAACP in addition to being active with St. Paul AME Church where she was also a member. She lived out her passions for travel, fashion, teaching and giving back to the community.” She is buried at Glendale Cemetery in Des Moines, IA.

Sources

Taylor, Kay Ann. (2001). Eleanor’s story: Growing up and teaching in Iowa:
one African American woman’s experience [Doctoral dissertation, Iowa State University].

Zehner, Roseanna. (2004, 2 Mar). Oliver J. Fay, M.D., Fay, Schreimer, Schreiner, Knapp, Hotchkiss. IA GenWeb Project. Retrieved from http://iagenweb.org/boards/allamakee/biographies/index.cgi?rev=47148

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Carver, George Washington (B.S., 1894; M.S., Agricultural Science, 1896)

Headshot of George Washington Carver

George Washington Carver was born around 1864 (exact year unknown) to Mary Carver on the Moses Carver plantation in Diamond Grove, Missouri. George’s father was killed in an accident before his son’s birth, so Carver never met his father. George was raised from infancy on the plantation of Moses and Susan Carver, his mother having been lost in a slave raid from which baby George had been returned to the Carvers (Fishbein, 2007).

Carver’s childhood is well documented, so we won’t attempt to cover that aspect of his life in this biography. Readers interested in his developmental years may consult the many biographies of this well-respected scholar.

Imbued with a lifelong thirst for learning and detailed knowledge about flora and plants, Carver left Diamond Grove, where there were no schools for African Americans, to pursue his education. Though frail as a child, he moved to several parts of Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa before attending Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, to study piano and painting. At Simpson College, art instructor Etta Budd recognized Carver’s talent with plants and convinced him to pursue a degree in agriculture. With Budd’s father being the head of the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State College of Agricultural and Mechanic Arts (now Iowa State University), Carver became the first Black student to enroll at the college. During his time at ISC, evidence suggests that he lived on campus in the servant’s quarters in North Hall. After Carver completed his bachelor’s degree in 1894, Professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel encouraged him to pursue a graduate degree. Carver was appointed as a member of ISC’s faculty, becoming Iowa State’s first African American faculty member. Then, following attainment of his M.S. in Agricultural Science in 1896, he was invited by Booker T. Washington to work at the Tuskegee Institute. Developing 325 products from peanuts and hundreds of other products from other plants native to the South, Carver’s work gained international reputation.

Passing away in 1948, he received many honors including: the Roosevelt Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Southern Agriculture in 1939; a museum dedicated to him at Tuskegee in 1941; the establishment of the George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond Grove, the first national monument dedicated to an African American and a non-president, in 1943; a park named after him in Winterset, Iowa, where Carver lived in 1888, one hundred years later in 1988; an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Iowa State University in 1994; and being inducted into the U.S.D.A.’s Hall of Heroes in 2000. The plaque at the George Washington Carver National Monument in Diamond Grove reads as follows: “Within this area by act of Congress of July 14, 1943, is preserved the birthplace of George Washington Carver who rose from slavery to become a distinguished scientist and a great force in creating racial understanding.”

Iowa State College Thesis Title: Plants as modified by man (bachelor’s thesis), 1894

Sources

Photo Credit: The Bomb

Fishbein, Toby. (2007). The legacy of George Washington Carver. Published for the George Washingtopn Carver All-University Celebration. Iowa State University. Internet Archive. Accessed 30 April 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20120320224324/http://www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/gwc/bio.html

https://digitalcollections.lib.iastate.edu/islandora/object/isu%3ACarver

https://www.madisoncounty.com/george-washington-carver/

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Calloway, Nathaniel Oglesby (B.S., Chemistry, 1930; Ph.D., Chemistry, 1933)

Headshot of Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway

Nathaniel Ogelsby Calloway was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, on 10 October 1907, as one of the five children of James N. Calloway and Marietta (aka Mary E., aka Mamie) Oglesby Calloway. His father had been enslaved when young but had gone on to receive a college degree. Calloway began his studies at Iowa State College in 1926, working toward a Bachelor’s of Science in Organic Chemistry, which he received in 1930. During those undergraduate years, he was a member of the ISC Debate Team. Following his B.S. he enrolled in the Organic Chemistry Ph.D. program at Iowa State, working with Dr. Henry Gilman. Calloway earned his Doctorate in Organic Chemistry in 1933, becoming the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Iowa State. He maintained regular contact with Dr. Gilman via correspondence after completing his degree. Many of those letters are in the Gilman papers in Iowa State University Special Collections. While attending ISC, Calloway lived at 1204 3rd Street, the Walter G. Madison home; 218 Lincoln Way, the Archie and Nancy Martin House; and 2928 Wood Street, the home of ISC alumna Willa Juanita Ewing’s family, the Charles Anthonys.

Dr. Calloway married Henriette Mabel Fulton of Des Moines, Iowa, on 29 August 1933. After graduating, he became a chemistry professor and then Head of the Department of Chemistry at Tuskegee Institute from 1933 to 1935. According to a letter from fellow Iowa State alumnus A. C. Aldridge, Dr. Calloway was present at the inaugural event for Tuskegee’s new President, Frederick D. Patterson, ISC class of 1921 and 1927. In 1936, Dr. Calloway took up a position as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Fisk University which he held until 1940. In 1939, he started looking seriously for jobs in industry, because marital problems led to his position being difficult at Fisk with its strict Quaker administration (Calloway, 1939). Following his divorce from his first wife, Calloway married three more times, his last wife being the former Mary Ann Borucki (“Dr. Calloway Dead” 9). 

Calloway, seeing no opportunities for advancement at Fisk, left the university in 1940, taking up graduate coursework in the University of Chicago’s Pharmacology Department (Calloway, 1940). His work at the University of Chicago went well initially, though Calloway expressed frustration with how little chemistry was actually involved in Pharmacology. In 1941 he won a 2-quarter fellowship in Pharmacology, was able to be employed during the summer full-time to earn money, and then received an assistantship that allowed him to teach in Pharmacology the next school year (Calloway, 1941). By spring 1943, however, the racism present at the school had begun to chafe; he “ran into so much racial prejudice at Chicago University in regard to clinical facilities” that he decided to leave the school for one “more liberal in its attitude” (Calloway, 1943). He graduated with his M.D. from the University of Illinois Medical School in December 1943.

After that, Dr. Calloway went on to be an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Illinois in the 1950s and early 1960s; Chief of Medical Service at the Tomah, Wisconsin, Veterans Administration Hospital from 1963-1966; and the Madison, Wisconsin, General Hospital, from 1966 until his death on 3 December 1979. When not engaged in medical work, Dr. Calloway was a leader in the African American community in Chicago and nationally. According to Notable Black American Scientists, “his role in reorganizing the Chicago chapter of the Urban League [as its President from 1955 to 1959]…helped transform it from an embarrassment for the national organization to one of its most successful chapters” (Krapp, 1998, p. 54). He later served as the National Director of the Urban League from 1959-1962. When he became a Lecturer in the Afro-American Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970, “his…teachings on genetics and race…helped debunk racist notions of white superiority” (Krapp, 1998, p. 54); Calloway argued that “Often what are called racial differences are social and economic differences” (Krapp, 1998, p. 55). Also in 1970, Iowa State University honored Dr. Calloway with a Distinguished Alumni Award. Unfortunately, Calloway’s life was not without controversy. He was ousted from his Urban League Directorship for distancing the organization from early 1960s’ activism, and later, being accused of over-prescribing dangerous drugs to his patients in Madison (Krapp, 1998).

Because of his family’s long association with Tuskegee University, Dr. Nathaniel Calloway is buried in the university cemetery.

Iowa State College dissertation title: Condensation reactions of furfural and its derivatives

Iowa State University Library permalink: https://doi.org/10.31274/rtd-180813-14731

Sources

Calloway, Nathaniel. (1939). Gilman letter, 5 January 1939, Henry Gilman Papers, Iowa State University Special Collections Department, RS 13/6/52, Box 8, folder 8/12.

Calloway, Nathaniel. (1940). Gilman letter, 9 October 1940, Henry Gilman Papers, Iowa State University Special Collections Department, RS 13/6/52, Box 8, folder 8/12.

Calloway, Nathaniel. (1941). Gilman letter, 13 August 1941. Henry Gilman Papers, Iowa State University Special Collections Department, RS 13/6/52, Box 8, folder 8/12.

Calloway, Nathaniel. (1943). Gilman letter, 15 June 1943. Henry Gilman Papers, Iowa State University Special Collections Department, RS 13/6/52, Box 8, folder 8/12.

Dr. Calloway dead at 72. (1979, December 13). Tuskegee News. p 9. Accessed 4 January 2022.  http://tkg.stparchive.com/Archive/TKG/TKG12131979P09.php  

Krapp, Kristine M., ed. (1998) Nathaniel Oglesby Calloway, in Notable Black American scientists, Gale/Cengage Learning. pp. 54-56.

Biography available at  HBCU Connections at Iowa State University :  Nathaniel O. Calloway    http://hbcuconnections.iastatedigital.org/Nathaniel_O._Calloway 

Photo Credit:  https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/calloway-nathaniel-oglesby-1907-1979/

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Shannon, Joseph Lionel  (D.V.M., 1909)

Headshot of Joseph Lionel Shannon.

Joseph Lionel Shannon was born 15 February 1885 in San Fernando, Trinidad, one of two sons born to Julia Caroline Shabler and Joseph Luther Shannon. The younger Shannon arrived at Ellis Island on 12 August 1905, with $90, having paid his own fare from Barbados to attend school at Iowa State College, where he earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Degree in 1909. Upon immigration, his profession was noted as “clerk” (Ancestry.com, 2010a). While at ISC Shannon was a member of the Veterinary Medicine Society, the Cosmopolitan Club, and Sigma Upsilon Phi. In 1906, he lived in the home of widow Louisa Walters on Boone Street, near what is now the northwest corner of Hayward Avenue. Following graduation, Dr. Shannon stayed in Iowa until 1910, when he returned to Barbados (Ancestry.com, 2010b). 

By January 1915, Dr. Shannon had been appointed as the first Government Veterinary Surgeon of St. Kitts, British West Indies, an appointment heralded as “progressive” and indicative of the “importance of scientific veterinary work” by the Agricultural News: A Fortnightly Review of the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies (1915, p. 24). In the next few years, Shannon traveled between the U.S. and his West Indian home on several occasions. He returned to the United States in 1916 to purchase a thoroughbred racehorse to bring back to St. Kitts (Famous, 1916, p. 9). Then, on 21 January 1917, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported, “Dr.  J.  Lionel  Shannon,  of  St.  Kitts,  British  West Indies,  has  been  retained  by  John  E.  Madden  as  veterinarian at  Hamburg Place” (p. 9).  Becoming a vet for Madden, the top breeder in the United States from 1917 to 1927 (Voss, 2022) and the man who bred Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown winner (1920), acknowledged Shannon’s expertise in the field of equine medicine. By 1919, Shannon had returned to the British West Indies, once again employed as a government veterinarian, this time in Trinidad, but  he returned to Kentucky on a mission to purchase “fine stock and turkeys for his government for the purposes of breeding” (“Buys,” 1919, p. 5). That same year, he married Grace Constance Marshall in Trindad.

Shannon was still working for the government of Trinidad and Tobago in 1924, when he was employed as the overseer of the government farm, according to The Trinidad and Tobago Year Book (Franklin, 1924). What occurred in Dr. Shannon’s career after that has yet to be discovered in this project’s research. J. Lionel Shannon died in Trinidad in 1963.

Sources

Photo credit: Iowa State University. (1909). 1909 Bomb (p. 92). Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.lib.iastate.edu/islandora/object/isu%3ATheBomb_49215

Ancestry.com. (2010a).  New York, U.S., arriving passenger and crew lists (including Castle Garden and Ellis Island), 1820-1957 [database on-line]. Ancestry.com Operations.

Ancestry.com. (2010b) List or manifest of alien passengers for the United States immigration officer at port of arrival. [database on-line]. Ancestry.com Operations.

Buys fine stock. (1919, May 27). The Mt Sterling advocate. p. 5. 

Famous Old Pastorella bought by R. T. Wilson, Jr.–other good sales of thoroughbreds in Bluegrass. (1916, Oct. 8). Lexington leader. p. 9

Franklin, C.B., compiler. (1924). The Trinidad and Tobago year book. Franklin’s Electric Printery.

Lexington herald-leader. (1917, Jan. 21). Lexington, Kentucky. p. 9.

Personal notes. (1915,  Jan. 16). Agricultural news: A fortnightly review of the Imperial Department of Agriculture for the West Indies, vol.14(332), p. 24. 

Voss, Natalie. (2022, Jul. 6). Kentucky farm time capsule: Before Hamburg Place was a shopping center. The back ring. Retrieved 17 February 2023. https://backring.paulickreport.com/kentucky-farm-time-capsule-before-hamburg-place-was-a-shopping-center/  

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