Washington worked with equality greats such as Julius Rosenwald to create an organized system to educate people of color in the American South . In every Rosenwald schoolhouse across the South hung a picture of Booker T. Washington.
And by the early 1900s Washington’s popularity had grown immensely.
Historic archives show how Washington’s popularity captured the attention of Claiborne Parish residents when the famous educator made a rare trip to Louisiana in April of 1915.
An advertisement in The Guardian-Journal, Homer, Louisiana, showed that tickets were available on an excursion train that would arrive in Haynesville at 7:40 a.m., Homer at 8:30 a.m., and Athens at 9:04 a.m. before arriving in Gibsland to hear Washington speak.
Those were the days when local passenger train travel was available in the ArkLaTex.
The Guardian-Journal advertised the event in advance.
“Booker T. Washington… is advertised to speak at Gibsland next Friday, the 16th… All of his writings and public speeches have been sound, containing wholesome advice to his race… It is of our understanding that Washington was born of slave parents, and was without any special advantages to begin with, but as led on by his genius,” we learn from a TG-J article that was printed on Wednesday, April 14, 1915, almost a week before Washington’s arrival.
DR WASHINGTON AT GIBSLAND was the leading headline in the TG-J on Apr. 21. The paper printed that Washington was “the greatest (person of color) in the world” after his Gibsland speech was delivered to a “vast multitude of people both white and black on the campus at Coleman College.”
Coleman Baptist Male and Female College educated the children of freed slaves after opening in 1890. It was organized in 1885 by Palestine Missionary Baptist Church, and the school was held there for the first two years. At first, the school accepted students in 1st through 8th grade.
The school later had approximately 100 acres in Gibsland (Bienville Parish) as their campus. Coleman College was one of the first Black educational institutions in Northwest Louisiana.
Coleman College administration building in Gibsland, Louisiana. (Source: public domain)
Students paid their tuition with produce from local farms, and life at the school was humble. Commencement exercises at Coleman were held under a brush arbor beside the church.
Area churches formed the “Springville Missionary and Educational Association” to support the college.
The school was named after Oliver Lewis Coleman, the son of an enslaved couple from Canton, Mississippi.
When Coleman was a child, he watched people of color sign their names with an X. He saw them suffer because they didn’t have schools, and he wanted to do something to help.
And so Oliver Louis Coleman got himself an education and changed the name of the game.
Coleman went to high school in Livingston, Mississippi before graduating from Alcorn A&M College. He attended the University of Chicago and Chatauta University.
A. L. Coleman photo from “Evidence of Progress Among Colored People” by G. F. Richings
And he did create schools that taught people of color in the Deep South. But he did more than that. Coleman educated people who were determined to make the world a better place.
Coleman’s son later wrote of the beginnings of the college his father began: “Poor God-fearing people out of their meager holdings gave liberally; sometimes all they possessed. Indivuduals who had no money to contribute gave their time and labor to aid in erecting buildings… Many Baptist ministers gave; those who had no money used their influence to get people to help.”
CC was also supported by the Southern Baptist Church and the campus consisted of 8 buildings with classrooms, an auditorium, dormitories, and an administration building.
The American Baptist Home Mission Society in Boston, Massachusettes gave Coleman College yearly grants.
During the school’s heyday, the Coleman Bulldogs’ biggest rivals were the Grambling Tigers.
The red bricks for the school building that was constructed in 1908 were made from the red clay found in the hills around the school. The students helped with the construction, just as students as Tuskegee did in the school’s early days.
“Professor Coleman taught student(s) how to mix, shape, and cure bricks. The bricks were cured in a kiln which he had helped students build,” recalled Mrs. Essie Sims long after she graduated from Coleman College.
The first campus
Several brick buildings were scattered across the school’s property by the 1920s–eight buildings with classrooms, dorms, an admin building, and an auditorium. Students studied algebra, geometry, Latin, English, music, chemistry, and Bible study, choir, glee club, and athletics. The school had hundreds of students and more than 600 people became Christians because of the college.
Another 1000 became teachers and preachers.
Coleman College: Reynold’s Hall, the girls’ dorm. (Source: public domain)
The school was a training institute for teachers and preachers, which were desperately needed throughout the state. Graduates of Coleman College spread education and faith across Northern Louisiana and, eventually, across the south and to the rest of the world.
The very first president of Southern University (Dr. J. S. Clark) graduated from Coleman College in Gibsland. He also started Baton Rouge College. Professor R. E. Jacobs graduated from Coleman in 1897 and went on to found the Sabine Normal and Industrial Institute in Converse, Louisiana in 1903.
Those two examples are just a few of the educators who fanned out across the region to help the cause of Black education. And we’re only talking a handful of decades after the Civil War, at that.
Because of O. L. Coleman’s dream and Coleman College, the educational institution he started, Black education in Louisiana spread like wildfire in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
So did faith in God.
The tree of prayer, a miracle spring, and the car accident
Historic records tell us that O. L. Coleman had a tree he visited often in Gibsland. Coleman spent a lot of time there in meditation, praying to God. It is said that the tree began to take on a new shape, leaning to one side. It looked like it was praying and it became known as the “tree of prayer.”
Coleman’s faith in his maker was so strong, according to legend, that when a draught hit the region and the well at the college dried up, he and others prayed hard for rain. But instead of rain as an answer to their prayer, water began flowing out of a hill where there had been no spring before and it became the new source of water for the college.
Coleman College founder and president O. L. Coleman died as a result of a car accident in 1927 and his son Monroe McVicker Coleman was chosen as the new president of the college.
Reverend Roy Mayfield
By 1934, Reverend Roy A. Mayfield became the president of Coleman College. Mayfield was a Baptist minister who preached in Homer, Louisiana for decades while simultaneously opening and running a school. The public school for people of color in Homer (Claiborne Parish) during the days of segregation was named after Mayfield.
Under Mayfield’s control, Coleman College specialized in training ministers.
Understanding Roy Mayfield’s faith truly shows why such ministerial training really changed the world for the better.
In 1944, Coleman College (under Mayfield’s command) closed in Gibland and opened in what is now Shreveport–though the community was called Mooretown at the time.
Booker T. Washington visits Coleman College in Gibsland
Booker T. Washington’s visit to Coleman College in Gibsland, according to The Guardian-Journal, “was the first visit the famous (Black) reformer ever made to this section and his coming was a source of much gratification to prominent men of his race.”
People traveling with Washington to Gibsland included important men from Tuskegee, Southern University, Hampton University, and an array of local politicians.
The train car they used for travel purposes came with them, too.
“As a prelude Prof. R. E. Clark appeared and announced that he would merely introduce some of the leading and most prominent men of his race that were traveling with Washington and working for the uplift of the (Black) race,” wrote a reporter at T G-J. “These men arose, and bowed their acknowledgments as they were introduced.”
During his speech in Gibsland, Booker T. Washington said “neither race desired to be separated from the other, and would continue to live peaceably together in the same country.”
Washington also spoke of how a vicious person, a law-breaker, appears among all races sometimes, but they will be dealt with by law-abiding, God-fearing people as the necessity of the case demands.
Booker T. Washington’s visit part of much larger train tour
Washington’s speech in Gibsland was part of a larger tour. On Saturday, April 3, 1915, the Weekly Town Talk (Alexandria) wrote that Booker T. Washington was touring the entire state.
“This trip has been approved by Governor Hall, the superintendent of state instruction, the Hon. T. H. Harris; Mayor Behrman, of New Orleans, and city and parish officials in the several localities where Dr. Washington is to speak,” we learn in the Weekly Town Talk.
Mayor Egan of Crowley said the following to Washington: “On behalf of the citizens of Crowley, I extend to you an invitation to visit our city during your tour of our state. We assure you that you will have the co-operation and support of the best white people and colored people in our progressive city.”
The Mayor of Gibsland said of Washington, “I consider him the foremost educator of your race, living. His coming will be an event of great importance to the entire citizenship of Bienville parish and especially to your school, which is conducted along lines adopted by him.”
Booker T. Washington visits Shreveport
On Saturday, April 17, 1915, not long after Washington’s speech at Coleman College in Gibsland, The (Shreveport) Times reported that Washington addressed over 6,000 people at State Fair Grounds in Shreveport.
“There is going to be more peace, more racial co-operation, more harmony, more friendship and more prosperity,” Booker T. Washington said in the speech he gave in Shreveport.
The (Shreveport) Times stated that Washington was enthusiastically applauded “throughout his utterances and at the close an ovation was given.”
The (Shreveport) Times reported positively of Booker T. Washington, a relative miracle for the time-period. A reporter for the newspaper wrote and published the following words:
“We want to make this southland of ours in all respects the equal of the other sections of our country. We want to develop it and make it great and prosperous and strong. We want to make it great and rich in material things, but not merely in material things. We want to make it greater and richer in those things that make for the uplift of humanity . We want laws that are just and fair to all and the faithful and impartial execution of those laws. We want greater protection for life and property. We want a more general inculcation of the principals of virtue and morality. We want a more widespread diffusion of intelligence and knowledge-common schools and training schools … Efficiency is the great result to be aimed at in whatever we undertake. It is that which marks the difference between success and failure. We want a more general forming of habits of industry. Our county needs that the people of both races be sober, honest, frugal and thrifty. We want a God-believing and God-fearing country. Booker T. Washington stands for these things. He advise(s) and counsels and leads along these lines. Hear him and heed his words.”
Historians are currently searching for transcripts for Booker T. Washington’s speeches from his visits to Gibsland College and the Shreveport Fair Grounds.
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So much History of beginnings in Shreveport 🧐To think Students only went to the 7th grade & became more accomplished than High School Graduates of Today..Mooretown & Coleman College now We know how they got their Names 😁
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