Newspapers / North Carolina Federation of … / March 1, 1961, edition 1 / Page 5
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Spring, 1961 Northeastern Clubs Hold One-Day Meet The sixth annual district meet ing of the N. C. Federated Clubs of the northeastern section of the state was held at Mt. Zion Baptist Church here on Saturday. “New Frontiers for Federated Women” was the conference theme. Mrs. M. N. Leito, newly elected president, presided over the busi ness session of the one-day meet ing. Guest Speaker, Miss Wilhemina M. Crossen, president of Palmer Memorial Institute, spoke on “Tak ing A New Look at Our Clubs.” She gave the women a blue print for the formation, functioning, and suc cess of a good club. They were told to be examples and a pattern for our youth. “To getherness was suggested as the master key.” Miss Mae D. Holmes, superin tendent of the Girl’s Home in Kins ton gave remarks. The Youth Group sponsored an oratorical contest using for its sub ject, “Our Next Generation, Amer ica’s New Image.” First place went to Doris Atkin son of Smithfield, N. C.; second place, to Louise Curtis of Selma, N. C. and third place to Gloriane Jackson of Elizabeth City, N. C. The Scrap Book contest was won by the Flower and Art Club of Rich Square, N. C., with second place going to the Social Club of Kinston, N. C. and third place to the Ma tron’s Club of Elizabeth City. Other highlights of the meeting were: a fashion show given by sev en girls from the Marian Anderson of Wilson and the presentation of two “Fifty-Year Clubs,” the Ban- naker Club of Kinston and the Ma trons Club of Elizabeth City. The Host Club served a turkey dinner. Thirty clubs compose the mem bership of the Northeastern dis trict which has for its motto: “Let us be Seen by our Deeds.” Viola T. Bishop, Reporter Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught hap piness without dreaming of it; but likely enough it is gone the moment we say to ourselves, “Here it is!” like the chest of gold that treasure seekers find.—Nathaniel Hawthorne THE FEDERATION JOURNAL WHITMAN TRIBUTE (Continued from Page 1) interdenominational. It is true that the student body at present, as well as the faculty, is entirely Negro. But Dr. Brown will tell you that her own life and the progress of the school have evinced a steadfast determination to break all barriers to Negro education while maintain ing friendly and dignified relations with enlightened white people. Dr. Brown’s drawing room at Sedalia could be that of a “proper Bostonian.” There are the prints of Sargent’s Frieze of the Prophets, beloved by patrons of the Boston Public Library; there are the Pil grims going to church through the snow; and on the bookshelves are the Harvard Classics. Dr. Brown was graduated from high school in Cambridge, Mass., and won a scholarship at Welles- DORIS ATKINSON, first prize winner in the youth oratorical contest receives congratulations from Palmer Memorial Insti tute’s president. Miss W. M. Crosson, while Louise Curtis and Gloraine Jackson, second and third place recipients look on. They spoke during the after noon session of the Northeastern District meeting in Rocky Mount. ley. Her teacher’s training was in the Massachusetts State Teachers College. In addition she holds a number of honorary degrees. But she will tell you, with char acteristic frankness and pride in obstacles surmounted, that her grandmother was a slave. When she was seven her family moved to Massachusetts, where her father and her uncles, skilled brick masons, could make the good wages paid white workmen. It was 11 years before she came back to teach in the South. But those years prepared her to meet white people as friends and equals, for they had been her companions in the North. “White friends in the North gave generously to found the school, but Southern white people helped us too,” she recalls. Across the road stands a little white wooden church, its walls hung with blackboards, where the first classes were held. Today the school property, free of debt, is valued at almost a million dollars. The indomitahle little womdn, sitting on a piano bench and run ning smooth hands over the key board ,as she talks, did it all with out compromising. “Of course they started calling me Lottie when I came back to North Carolina,” she remembers, “because they’d known my grand mother as Aunt Becky and my mother as Caroline.” But like Mary McLeod Bethune, who won her right lo respectful ad dress by a well-timed protest in Alabama, Charlotte Hawkins Brown in due time became Doctor Brown in North Carolina. Not too many people have five doctor’s degrees. And although Palmer Institute, as a privately-endowed school for Negroes, could stand aside from the present struggle, it is far too lively a place for that. Tacked on a bulletin board in the library is a newspaper clipping that describes the recent arrest of one of the girl students: pretty Mary Sue Welcome spent three r Page 5 hours in Baltimore’s Pine Street jail for participation in a restau rant sit-down. Some years ago Dr. Brown wrote a little book about good manners which has had four printings, and Palmer students practice the etiquette she preach ed. But manners are reciprocal and white people are supposed to have them too. Miss Wilhelmina Crosson, once a pupil in Dr. Brown’s Sunday School class and now her successor as active head of the school, sees the need for change and also for preserving the values that under Dr. Brown, made Palmer Institute unique. Palmer Institute concerts have been given in Boston’s Tremont Temple and Symphony Hall as well as in North Carolina. The concerts and Dr. Brown’s lec tures not only raised money but interested people. Nor was there any thought, certainly on the part of Northern friends, that schools such as Palmer would perpetuate segregation in the South. Rather, with its own traditions as liberal as those of Harvard and Radcliffe and Wellesley, Palmer can claim a part in the education of Southern whites toward accept ance of their Negro neighbors as people of “background” and aca demic distinction, with whom it is pleasant and rewarding to wcrk. Members of the Marian Anderson Youth Club of Wilson, N. C., wearing the costumes which they designed and exhibited in the Fashion Show given at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Northeastern District Federated Clubs held in Rocky Mount, N. C. GROSSON TRIBUTE (Continued from Page 1) McLeansville and walked four miles along a dusty road to a lit tle white church where she became a teacher under the leadership of Mr. Baldwin. The woman who founded Palmer Memorial Institute who has lived in her native state for fifty-eight continuous years, is a living tribute to her work, her character, and her unbounded faith in God and humanity. This school was closed the next year, but Dr. Brown seeing the need for a school in the communi ty converted an old blacksmith shop into a project that interested both white and black and in the fall of October 1902, Palmer Me morial Institute was born. "f ever an institution was a trib ute to one person, a lengthening shadow of one person’s aspiration, effort, and faith. Palmer Memorial Institute has proved it. In her thinking, in her personality, in her philosophy of life, especially as it concerned her race, its cultural achievements and its cooperative relationship, has been the epitomy of all that is noble. Dr. Brown is a talented musi cian; she holds six honorary de grees including three doctorates. Dr. Seabrook, president emeritus of Fayetteville Teacher’s College, once said Palmer Memorial Insti- (Continued on Page 6)
North Carolina Federation of Negro Women’s Clubs Journal
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March 1, 1961, edition 1
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