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From Left to Right Sojourner Truth, Thurgood Marshall, Booker T. Washington.
Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Tubman and Frederick Doughlas |
The
spotlight on Black History is more beautiful when it is personal. It was May
1957. It was springtime in Kentucky and the
family headed north. There were two
ceremonies to attend with two of the family honored. The first stop would be the Lincoln Institute, named for President Abraham Lincoln. The second stop would be the Kentucky State College.
Lincoln Institute
was a boarding school for (colored) high school students. The disintegration of integration had not yet
arrived. Lincoln had come into existence
early in the century because of the Day Law, named for sponsoring legislator,
Carl Day.
Carl Day
had discovered black and white children attending school together in Berea,
Kentucky in the early 1900’s. He was
outraged. As a member of the Kentucky
House, he sponsored legislation making it illegal for blacks and whites to be
in public school, together.
The Day Law, was
"an Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same
School," was signed into law in the Commonwealth of Kentucky by Governor J.C.W.
Beckham in March 1904. The Day Law, named after
Breathitt Countian Carl Day who introduced the bill in the Kentucky House of
Representatives, prohibited students of color from attending the same school as
white students. Also, they could not attend schools less than twenty-five miles
from a whites-only school.
Because of
this legislation, it was necessary for my father Clyde Crawford Jr. and his siblings to attend the
Lincoln Institute. The only (colored)
schools available only went to eighth grade.
My grandfather Clyde Crawford, Sr. was the principal of one county
(colored) school and my grandmother Maude Estil Crawford was a teacher in the
bordering county (colored) school.
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| Emma Jean Crawford |
My father,
Clyde Crawford, Jr. and his brother, Oscar Crawford graduated from Lincoln in
1948, number one and number three in their class. Sister Emma Jean Crawford would be the family
honoree in May of 1957.
Dr. Samuel
Morris gave the baccalaureate address at Lincoln on that May morning. At the conclusion of his speech, Dr. Morris said,
“You have heard nothing until you hear the speaker at Kentucky State’s
graduation this afternoon.”
That
afternoon my grandmother Maude Estil Crawford received her Bachelors in Teacher Education from
Kentucky State College. The speaker did
not give the usual commencement address.
This one was different.
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| Maude Estil Crawford |
He stood up
with the deep sound of a southern Black Baptist Preacher in his voice. He preached the audience happy to shouting standing
on their feet. They were prompting this
pulpit soldier to go on and say it, Reverend!
Two of our
family’s great ones received honors that day.
There would be a Crawford at Lincoln Institute and Kentucky State from
1944 until 1961. My brother Ronnie Crawford and I
picked up the mantle again in 1973. Our
family believes is deeply invested in education as the pathway up to personal and professional development.
The most
memorable day seems to have been that day back in 1957, in a public school
gymnasium packed to capacity because the king was in town. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the
speaker that day and the family still speaks of it after all these years. The
spotlight on Black History is more beautiful when it is personal.
