Charlotte A. Mitchell: The Second “Class Act” for Bossier Parish’s Jeanes Teachers

Until as late as 1970, if you wanted to easily find the leaders of African-American communities in the South, you would do best to look in the segregated Black schools. The most educated, highly-regarded, and active members of the community could be found there, working as school teachers or administrators. The supervisors of African American schools in hundreds of school districts throughout the South were called Jeanes Teachers, or Supervisors, and they exemplified leadership. Their titles were named for the Philadelphia Quaker philanthropist behind the Jeanes program, Anna T. Jeanes.

The Bossier Parish School Board tapped Charlotte Mitchell as its second Jeanes Teacher in 1925, following Carrie Martin. Mrs. Mitchell supervised Bossier Parish’s approximately one hundred African-American teachers spread throughout the rural parish. The parish superintendent stated that Mrs. Mitchell was expected to travel throughout Bossier to “Improve classroom instruction, direct industrial activities and promote production and preservation of foods, through school activities.”

Charlotte Watson Mitchell was born in Benton, Bossier Parish in 1880 to Ralph and Jane Watson. Ralph Watson was born enslaved in South Carolina in about 1825. Jane Watson was also born in South Carolina, in 1843. According to the 1880 Census, Ralph Watson could read but not write. He worked as a janitor at the Bossier Parish courthouse in the parish seat of Benton and owned 50 acres that he farmed. In 1912 Charlotte Watson married Oliver L. Mitchell. Oliver Mitchell worked in many occupations during his lifetime, including as a preacher in the Colored Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church, teacher, school administrator, and farmer.

When Charlotte Mitchell became a Jeanes Teacher for Bossier schools, she was 45 years old and the mother of three young children. Husband Oliver was working as principal of what became the Bossier Parish Training School in Benton where the family eventually lived on campus. As the “new” Jeanes Teacher, Charlotte Mitchell already had thirty-one years of teaching under her belt, mostly in rural schools, including eleven years in a one or two-teacher schoolhouse where she was responsible for teaching children in multiple grades at one time. She also taught algebra and Latin at the high school level and spent a year as a Jeanes Teacher in Lafayette County, Arkansas immediately north of Bossier Parish.

Charlotte Mitchell kept up Carrie Martin’s busy pace. In a “Report of Jeanes Agents” for 1928-29, there were sixty-two “Negro” public schools in Bossier Parish. She visited all but two of them over an average school term of 106 days. She also raised $1,615.00 for new, improved school buildings. On her visits, Mrs. Mitchell would check on the progress of the teachers. Retired Bossier Parish teacher Minnie B. Walker Payne remembered Charlotte Mitchell “was the supervisor of the school. And she would come around and sit…and write as you teach. Every class you taught she would write. After she would do that, she would have a conference with you and tell you of your weak points and tell your strong points…She never was harsh and she kept a smile. And she said, ‘Now teacher, it should be this way.’”

Ms. Payne also remembered how Charlotte Mitchell would help the teachers take care of the nutritional needs of the students. She reminisced:

And then too, we didn't have lunchrooms. We had…big old iron heaters like that with the pipe. And we would get commodities…I never will forget [Charlotte Mitchell]. In this commodity it was a lot of cabbage and apples. And she taught us how to cook apple and cabbage together. Oh, honey that's the best stuff in the world. You wouldn't believe it…Layer of apple, layer of cabbage on that wooden heater, get a great big old boil. And it was the best something.

Mrs. Payne said that Mrs. Mitchell was responsible for distributing the food for the schools, commodities that (along with all the cabbage and apples) typically included giant cans of vegetable soup that the teachers would heat up for the students.

A crowning achievement of Charlotte Mitchell’s tenure was the opening of the Bossier Parish Training School in Benton in 1928, producing its first secondary-level graduating class in in 1932. Training schools were post-elementary schools with an emphasis on industrial subjects or teacher training. The training school eventually expanded its offerings to increase the local supply of African American teachers by offering two years of college. As the only school of its kind in the parish, many students boarded in dormitories or with local families.

As a Jeanes Teacher, Charlotte Mitchell not only affected the educational life of the parish’s African-American community, but home life, as well. Over an eight-month period in 1932-1933, Charlotte Mitchell reported sixty visits to homes in addition to her seventy-five visits to schools. She led the Colored Home Demonstration Clubs in the parish and oversaw food canning centers in four of the parish’s African-American schools, allowing community members to put up thousands of tin cans of food each year. Many of the cans were set aside for the Red Cross to distribute to the hungry.

Charlotte Mitchell retired as Bossier Parish’s Jeanes Supervisor in 1937. She continued to teach for at least four more years at the Bossier Parish Training School where she still lived at the campus. Oliver Mitchell passed away in 1939. Charlotte Mitchell died in 1948 at the age of sixty-eight. However, Charlotte Mitchell’s name has endured. In 1954, the Bossier Parish School Board renamed the Bossier City Colored High School to Charlotte Mitchell High School. It is now known as Mitchell Community Center, with an adjoining Mitchell Park. The building, on Cox Street in “Old Bossier”, is used for youth and food bank programs by the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Office. In 2017 the Charlotte Mitchell High School class of 1969, the last to graduate in the school, dedicated “Charlotte Ann Mitchell Memorial Drive” with a large and visible sign on Cox Street, honoring Charlotte Mitchell almost 70 years after her passing.

Visit the History Center in the Bossier Parish Central Library Complex for more information on the Jeanes Teachers or other local women for March, Women’s History Month. We are located in the Bossier Central Library Complex at 7204 Hutchison Drive in Bossier City, LA. 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. Or, go online to our collections database and search for “Catalogs” at http://bossier.pastperfectonline.com/ The History Center is open: M-Fri 9-6. Saturdays we are open by appointment. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org For other local history events, facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, or check out our blog at http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Portrait of Charlotte A. Mitchell 1999.130.001
• Bossier Parish Training School (AKA C.H. Irion HS) in Benton, La. (Cover of Reunion Booklet 1986, Collection of BPL History Center)
• Charlotte Mitchell High School (AKA Bossier Colored HS) in Bossier City, La. 2013.016.001

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Bossier Parish’s first Jeanes Supervisor, Carrie Martin

Early 20th-century schools for African American children in the South, especially in rural areas, were in a catch-22 caused by a segregated education system that offered less months in the school term, and less years of schooling: You couldn’t have schools for African American students without African American teachers, and you couldn’t have African American teachers without African American schools, especially high schools. Enter a Quaker woman and philanthropist from Philadelphia named Anna T. Jeanes. In 1907 she created a one-million-dollar endowment named the Negro Rural School Fund, more commonly referred to as “the Jeanes fund,” to develop a cadre of educated and professionally trained African American teachers to staff more and better schools for African American children in the rural South, including secondary schools.

Carrie Washington Martin was a school teacher who became the first Jeanes Teacher (often referred to as Jeanes Supervisor) in Bossier Parish, and only the third in the state of Louisiana, in 1913. She was appointed by the Bossier Parish School Board after teaching for a number of years in the Plain Dealing area of northern Bossier Parish.

Carrie Martin was born in December of 1883 in Spring Ridge, Louisiana, a rural part of southwestern Caddo Parish. Her parents were Anthony and Georgia Jackson Washington. Her father farmed and served as a Methodist preacher; census records note that he was literate. Carrie was 16 years old when she married her first husband, Franklin Roan. The young couple lived a few houses away from her parents in Jackson Parish in 1900. Franklin’s fate is unknown, but in May of 1909 Carrie married James C. Martin in Bossier Parish. Her father owned land in the Hughes Spur community, which is near Plain Dealing. Carrie became a school teacher and her husband farmed. Carrie did not have a college degree, but she received teacher training during summer institutes for black teachers. This was typical of the early Jeanes Teachers.

As Bossier Parish’s first Jeanes Teacher, Carrie Martin was charged with providing or improving education for 4,733 African American “educables” ages six to eighteen, and supervising their teachers in 59 schools spread throughout the parish’s approximately 838 square miles. She would likely have been driving in her own vehicle, without travel compensation, on dirt roads that were, for much of the year, mud pits.

In addition to supervising and training teachers in the African American schools, and improving the literacy rate of less than 50% among the parish’s African American population according to the 1910 census, Carrie Martin was also expected to be a leader in school and community health and nutrition, home life, and beautification. As a Jeanes Teacher, she supervised home demonstration (home economics) work for African-American women, such as teaching food preservation, home management skills, and public health by making home visits and organizing homemaker clubs. She also organized community members to raise money to build more or better schools, including by raising livestock or growing cash crops with proceeds going toward a school fund.

Leo Favrot was the state supervisor for Rural Negro Schools and made several visits to Bossier Parish to inspect the schools and the work of Carrie Martin. She was ill during one of his visits, so he called on the parish’s superintendent of schools, W.A. Fortson, to discuss her work. Mr. Favrot concluded from this trip that there was considerable activity on Carrie Martin’s part, but that the Jeanes program did not have secure standing with the Bossier Parish School Board. Mr. Favrot’s suggestion was to win the board over with the usual strategy used at the time to sway a reluctant white community to the cause of education for African Americans– emphasize the practical, industrial nature of the Jeanes Teacher’s work, especially in agriculture.

In 1919, Bossier was without a Jeanes Teacher. The reason for this gap in Carrie Martin’s term is unknown, but Leo Favrot admonished the school board by saying, “This is to be deplored,” because Carrie Martin’s work had “done a lot of good” promoting the interests of schools in Bossier Parish. He hoped the board would resolve to again have a Jeanes teacher and make an appropriation “sufficiently large” to attract a very capable agent. They must have listened, because Carrie Martin was rehired as a Jeanes Teacher the following year.

Carrie Martin passed away on March 11, 1926 from cervical cancer, after an illness of about six months. In recognition for her significant work expanding and improving the educational opportunities available for African American students, the Bossier Parish School Board named the Plain Dealing all-grades school for African American students “Carrie Martin High School” in 1954. After the de-segregation of Bossier Parish schools (1970), the school closed, and Plain Dealing Elementary School opened in the same building. In 2003, community members pressed for the school board to once again have an existing school named to honor Carrie Martin, and Plain Dealing Elementary was re-named Carrie Martin Elementary. In 2018, the elementary school was moved to the campus of Plain Dealing’s middle and high school due to a declining enrollment, but the elementary wing is still named after Carrie Martin, and her portrait hangs in the hallway.

You can visit the Bossier Parish Libraries YouTube channel to watch a virtual slide show on Carrie Maritn, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig-kWHgY5mw&t=3s or contact us at the History Center if you’d like more information on the parish’s Jeanes Teachers. We are located in the Bossier Central Library Complex at 7204 Hutchison Drive in Bossier City, LA. 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA. Or, go online to our collections database and search for “Catalogs” at http://bossier.pastperfectonline.com/

Please note the new hours for the History Center: M-Fri 9-6. Saturdays we are open by appointment. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org For other local history events, facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/. Contact us if you’d like to be on our email list to receive our newsletter and History Center event updates.

Images: 

• Carrie Washington Martin: 2003 The Yellow Jacket Carrie Martin High School Reunion Yearbook
• Louisiana Rural School Agent Leo Favrot (caption on photo)
• Jeanes Teacher exhibit at La. State Fair (caption on photo)

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Inez Smith Grisby – Accomplished Teacher, Trailblazing Student

As one of Bossier Parish’s esteemed supervisors of schools for African American children in the mid-20th century, Inez Smith Grisby was especially known for her role as teacher, and teacher supervisor, not only in Bossier Parish, where she worked for over twenty years, but throughout the state. Less known, but as much of an achievement, was Inez Grisby’s role as a student, first in obtaining a rare high school diploma in 1925, because secondary schools for African-American students in Louisiana were few and far between, and then as a recipient of a master’s degree from Louisiana State University (LSU) in the 1950’s when the university was trying unremittingly to maintain its campus as an all-white institution.

Young Inez Smith, who was born in 1905 and hailed from south Louisiana, had the opportunity to attend high school in the New Orleans area. If she had grown up in Bossier, such a diploma would not have been available to her unless she travelled to Central Colored High School in Shreveport. In New Orleans, however, she was able to get her diploma from the “secondary department” of New Orleans University, a historically Black university founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church. The university had merged with Gilbert Academy, a private college preparatory school that was the first standard high school for African Americans in the nation accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

Early 20th-century African American schools, especially in rural areas, were in a catch-22 caused by segregation. You couldn’t have schools for African American students without African American teachers, and you couldn’t have African American teachers without African American schools – especially high schools. With a coveted high school diploma, an African American graduate could quality for a teaching certificate while completing requirements for postsecondary “normal,” or teacher-training, courses during summer institutes for teachers. Thus, Inez was teaching in rural schools soon after receiving her high school diploma, and attending summer institutes at Baton Rouge’s Southern University, a historically black university founded in 1888. She completed a bachelor’s degree from Southern in 1936, and began her supervising career in St. Mary Parish in 1936 – 1937.

Inez became Bossier Parish’s third Jeanes Teacher, or Jeanes Supervisor, in the 1937 – 1938 school session. A Jeanes Supervisor was a multi-faceted position named for the Quaker woman, Anna T. Jeanes, who funded a program to ensure a cadre of educated and professionally trained African American teachers to provide more and better schools for African American children, including secondary schools. In Bossier Parish, the Jeanes Teachers also supervised home demonstration (home economics) work for African-American women, such as teaching food preservation, home management skills, public health, making home visits and organizing homemaker clubs. They also organized community members to raise money to build more or better schools, and raised money for community organizations like the Red Cross or the March of Dimes.

In the 1950’s Inez pursued a Master’s degree from Louisiana State University when graduate and professional degrees (such as law or medicine) were not available at the universities or colleges for African Americans in Louisiana. Beginning in 1950, LSU admitted black students to these programs under court order since the school could not make the argument that “separate but equal” academic accommodations were available elsewhere. These orders meant that LSU admitted African American graduate students almost 15 years before it admitted African American undergraduate students (1964).

The Louisiana Weekly newspaper of New Orleans on Sept 15, 1956, outlined in painstaking detail the LSU Board of Supervisors’ conditions for maintaining social segregation in the face of mandated educational integration. One example (of twenty-one) is that the African American students could be invited to join an academic honor society, but were barred from attending the annual banquet. Religious clubs were also permitted to hold non-segregated religious meetings, but any social functions held by the group had to be segregated. Unfortunately, after completing her master’s degree as a trailblazing student, Inez, who rounded out her career as principal of Butler elementary in Bossier city, had little time to enjoy the benefit of the Master’s degree she earned in 1956. She passed away suddenly in 1959 at age 54.

As History Center curator Randall Palmer wrote in his parting article two weeks ago, here at the History Center we want to ensure that the stories of all who have shaped this parish, such as Inez Smith Grisby, are represented and preserved. By donating, or allowing us to scan or copy photographs, documents, family histories, and other materials, community members can help us build a richer, more inclusive collection that reflects the true diversity of Bossier Parish.

Please visit or contact us at the History Center. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive (formerly called 850 City Hall Drive) just across Beckett Street from the old Central Library and History Center in Bossier City, LA. All Bossier Parish Libraries locations will be closed Wednesday, 1/1/2025. Normal operating hours for Bossier Central Library and History Center are M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Picture of Inez Smith Grisby from the Bossier City Colored High/Charlotte A. Mitchell High School Reunion Booklet for Classes 1942-1969, July 6-9, 2000. Walter H. Martin collection, History Center archives.
• New Orleans College (New Orleans University), circa 1920. P. 115. Illustration in book "Methodist Adventures in Negro Education" by Jay S. Stowell; published in New York: The Methodist Book Concern, no date, circa 1921-1922. Accessed via Documenting the American South. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 14 February 2025 ˂https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/stowell/ill31.html>.

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Lydia Fay Walker: From Babies to Seniors, She Served them All

Here’s another extraordinary Bossier Parish woman to celebrate in March, which is Women’s History Month: Mrs. Lydia Fay Walker. Mrs. Walker became Bossier Parish’s last Jeanes Teacher, or Jeanes Supervisor, prior to school desegregation. A Jeanes Supervisor was a multi-faceted position named for the Quaker woman, Anna T. Jeanes, who funded a program to improve the training levels of teachers in Southern U.S. schools for African-American children. The Jeanes Teachers also supervised home demonstration work for African-American women in Bossier Parish, one of the few parishes that added responsibilities such as teaching food preservation, home management skills, public health, and doing home visits and homemakers clubs. They also organized community members to raise money to build more or better schools.  In many ways, Jeanes Supervisors were like a cross between teachers and Peace Corps Volunteers. 

In addition to her Jeanes teacher job, Lydia Fay Walker worked relentlessly throughout her life for the Parish’s citizens. She worked during segregation, especially for African-American students, and after segregation, she worked to improve conditions for every race and age range, from baby to senior citizen. 

Mrs. Walker was a native of Plain Dealing and a resident of Bossier City for 55 years. Her education career spanned that of a classroom teacher, principal and supervisor of elementary and secondary education and also as a parish-wide supervisor of adult education and a supervisor of student teachers from Bishop College in Dallas, her alma mater. She received a master’s from Columbia University and a business education degree from Spaulding Business College in Shreveport. She was married to L.G. Walker Jr., a school bus driver and farming truck driver. It seems they had no children of their own though they did have Lydia Fay’s sister and a young niece living with them on Hamilton Street in Bossier City.  

Through much of the 1960’s, essentially all aspects of life in Bossier Parish were segregated, including philanthropy. Lydia Fay Walker worked with fellow Jeanes supervisor Inez Cenales (at times they split the parish schools among them) and Jack Strong, president of the Bossier Parish Negro Teachers Association, as co-chairs of the 1948 March of Dimes (Polio Fund) for the parish’s “negro schools” in 1948, and was the point person for the Shreveport Times’ “Negro Joy Fund” in Bossier, calling for clothing and furniture and especially monetary donations for food. She was also co-chair of the American Red Cross “negro division” drive.  

However, Mrs. Walker’s fundraising would occasionally cross color lines even before desegregation. In the November 13, 1947, issue of the “Planters Press” of Bossier City, principal Jack L. Strong of Bossier City Colored High School issued an appreciation: “We, the Bossier City Colored Football Team along with our coaching staff, take this method to thank Lydia Fay Walker, supervisor of colored schools in Bossier Parish, for her soliciting from our white friends, funds to help our football team purchase their jerseys and sweaters, which they now have in their possession.” Mrs. Walker also served on the board of the Caddo-Bossier chapter for the Louisiana Association for Mental Health in the 1960’s.  

During her “retirement” in the 1970s and 1980s, Mrs. Walker worked and organized for social causes in a newly-integrating community. She directed the Bossier City Day Care Center, which she had helped found in the 1950’s when she saw a desperate need for it. Without it, she told a Shreveport paper, many children would be left with brothers and sisters who had to drop out of school to care for them, or they might be left alone. The center served as a second home for thousands of local children.  Mrs. Walker stated, “in training and caring for the children, we try to develop the whole child, so when they leave, they will be able to adjust well in public or private schools.” Transportation, breakfast, a hot lunch and snack were served, and playtime and naptime observed.  

Mrs. Walker is also credited with organizing the Bossier Parish Head Start program for preschoolers, was active in the United Way, the Voters League, the Cancer Drive and March of Dimes. She was a member of the Bossier Parish School Board’s advisory committee for school districts 3 and 13. She ran for school board membership in 1978 and lost by only 9 votes in a runoff election against former Bossier city mayor and real estate investor Jake Cameron. She told the Shreveport Times that her priorities were “providing quality education for all people, reducing dropouts and expanding equipment and curricula.” She ran again, unsuccessfully, in 1985.  

For the other end of the lifespan, in 1987 Lydia Fay Walker served as the member-at-large from Bossier City on the Bossier Council on Aging. She succumbed to cancer on October 9, 1989. Her funeral was held in Shreveport at Good Samaritan funeral home, officiated by Bro. Leroy Hudson, pastor of Bennet Street Church of Christ in old downtown Bossier City.  

If you have stories or photographs of some of the area’s civic-minded women, we’d love to see them, and perhaps make copies for our collection, with your permission. If you would like to have our “Women Who Made a Difference in Bossier Parish” program, which includes Lydia Fay Walker (in Part 2) or any of our other programs presented to your group, please contact us, as well. We are located at 2206 Beckett St, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org 

For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok

Image: 

Elect Lydia Fay Walker for Bossier Parish School Board, 1978, Bossier Parish Libraries History Collection

Article by: Pam Carlisle