Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Jim Crow. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

Paine College: Paine Institute was established in 1882 by the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church. Sensing an increased need for the education of African Americans following the Civil War, Bishop Lucius H. Holsey solicited the support of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1880. Initially established as a school for teachers and preachers, the present campus, in Augusta, Georgia, was obtained in 1886, although at the time it was a very rural setting. In 1903 Paine Institute, named in honor of Bishop Robert Paine, was re-chartered as Paine College. There were, however, few educational institutions for blacks at that time, so Paine College continued to provide secondary school education and instruction. In 1915, its 204 students had only 14 college level students, and the rest were evenly divided between secondary and primary grades. It course of instruction was considered highly academic, with classes in Latin, Greek, French, and German, as well as the broad liberal arts and science courses. In 1945, the college closed it lower levels to concentrate fully on the college curriculum and teacher education courses. Paine College has a long tradition of interracial cooperation, and it is one of the few private schools for blacks owned and staffed by southern white people during its initial forty or fifty years. Dr. John Wesley Gilbert, Paine's first student and first graduate continued his education at Brown University and in Athens, Greece, before returning to Paine as its first black faculty member. Since the 1890s, Paine College has maintained a racially integrated faculty. Today, Paine College remains a college closely associated with Christianity and the Methodist Church. It serves a full-time student body of over 680, of whom 99 percent are African American. The College offers 13 majors, the most popular being sociology, elementary education, counseling psychology and biology. Among Paine's more distinguished graduates are Bishops Marshall Gilmore of Texas, graduated in 1954, and Bishop Nathaniel L. Linsey of Ohio.

Patterson, Lillie: (1920 - ) Lillie Patterson received her BA from Hampton Institute and a second degree from Catholic University. She has published 25 titles ranging over a broad spectrum of genres, especially, however, aimed at children at young adults. Her books on holiday themes are considered classics. In addition, Patterson has written a number of non-critical biographies on lesser-known African-Americans as well as many novels specifically geared toward young Americans. Although her work avoids controversial aspects of an individual's private life, she does not simply glorify her subjects.

Paul Quinn College: Established in 1872, Paul Quinn is an independent undergraduate, coeducational, residential institution that is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Determined to provide students with strong academic grounding in arts and sciences, the school purposely steered away from the industrial and agricultural curriculum favored by many black colleges of that era. For most of its history, the college trained few students at the college level. In 1915, only 13 of its 286 students were in college subjects, and the large majority was enrolled in elementary courses. A report published in 1915 gave the college poor marks for instructing students at levels above their preparation and abilities--but this was probably biased in favor of industrial education for blacks. It experienced significant financial difficulty in the early 1990s, resulting in the loss of its accreditation, which has since been reinstated. As in the past, the college is dedicated to the education of all students within a Christian perspective by a faculty of Christian teachers and scholars. Present enrollment is approximately 580 students.

Payne, Bishop Daniel: (1811-1893) Born to free parents in Charleston, Payne became an ordained Bishop in the AME church and founded Wilberforce University in 1865, becoming the first African-American president of a college in America.

Peake, Mary S.: (1823-1862) Born free in Virginia, Peake spent her years before the war secretly educating slaves. After occupation of Virginia by the Union she became a teacher for the American Missionary Association, a northern organization that established schools for freed slaves throughout the South. Her daytime classes included as many as 60 students and at night she conducted classes for adults. The school later became the Hampton Institute, the renowned African-American College.

Peanut Oil: First introduced by enslaved Africans in the American South, especially in deep-fat frying, a cooking style that originated in western and central Africa.

Pensacola, Florida: Pensacola was the major Spanish colonial settlement in western Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. In 1516, Diego Miruelo discovered Pensacola Bay. Although Tristán de Luna attempted to colonize the area in 1559, the settlers abandoned the location two years later. Because of French efforts to expand their Louisiana colony eastwards in the late 1600s, Andrés de Arriola and Captain Juan Jordán established a permanent settlement at Pensacola in 1698 guarded by Ft. San Carlos. During the Spanish-French War of 1719-1720, Pensacola exchanged hands between the Spanish and French four times. The French burned Pensacola before the Spanish finally regained it by treaty. Although the Spanish rebuilt the town, a hurricane devastated it in 1754.

During the British colonial period (1763-1783), Pensacola served as the capital of the British colony of West Florida. During the American Revolution, Pensacola became a haven for Loyalist refugees from Georgia and the Carolinas. The Spanish Governor of New Orleans, Bernardo de Gálvez, captured the town, thereby helping the United States to win its independence. The Treaty of Paris of 1783, which ended the American Revolution, also confirmed the return of Florida to Spain. During the War of 1812, the British seized Pensacola, but U.S. forces led by Andrew Jackson expelled them. Jackson returned to Pensacola during the First Seminole War, in 1818, and seized it from the Spanish. In 1821, the Spanish Government transferred all of Florida to the United States under the terms of the Adams-Onís Treaty. Pensacola served as the temporary capital of the new territory of Florida until 1822. Andrew Jackson resided in Pensacola during his tenure as military governor of the territory. In 1824, Pensacola received its city charter and was selected as the site of a federal navy yard. The navy yard site is now Pensacola Naval Air Station, one of the nation's leading naval flight training schools.

Petry, Ann Lane: (1908-1997) Ann Lane was the second daughter of Peter Lane and Bertha James Lane, middle class professionals living in a white community in Connecticut. Lane first began to write in high school but graduated with a Ph.D. from Connecticut College of Pharmacy in 1931, after which she worked for nine years as a druggist in her father's drug store. In 1938 she married mystery writer George Petry and moved to New York. In 1941 she began five years as a journalist with the People's Voice, where she wrote a weekly column on Harlem's upper class. During these years she published several short stories, including one which focuses on children left home alone: "On Saturday Night the Sirens Sound." In 1945 Houghton Mifflin granted her a fellowship and they published her first novel, The Street, which, depicts a mother's struggles to provide a better life for herself and her children in the black urban ghetto of Harlem. This novel has become a classic of naturalistic/feminist writing, selling over two million copies by 1992. Among her writings are numerous books for children and young adults, poetry, short stories, and feminist novels.

Pettey, Sarah Dudley: (1831-1918) Author of a "Woman's Column" in the Star of Zion, Dudley was dedicated to civil liberties for women and African Americans. She toured extensively with her husband, Charles Dudley Pettey, to churches throughout the state giving speeches on women's rights and equality.

Philander Smith College: Established in 1877 to educate former slaves, it is Arkansas' oldest private, historically black college. A four-year liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church and the United Negro College Fund, Philander Smith College sits on an enclosed 12-square-block campus in the beautiful and historic Quapaw Quarter of downtown Little Rock.

Officially founded in 1877, Philander Smith College resulted from one of the early attempts to make education available to freedmen (former African-American slaves) west of the Mississippi River. The forerunner of the College was Walden Seminary, named in honor of Dr. J.M. Walden, one of the originators and the first Corresponding Secretary of the Freedmen's Aid Society.

In 1876, the General Conference of The Methodist Episcopal Church authorized the creation of an annual conference for Negro preachers in the State of Arkansas with the power to promote schools. The new body was named the Little Rock Annual Conference (later the Southwest Annual Conference). In 1877, this annual conference designated Walden Seminary as its official educational institution. In 1882, Dr. G.W. Gray, president of Little Rock University, the institution hosting the Arkansas Annual Conference, met Mrs. Adeline Smith, widow of Mr. Philander Smith of Oak Park, Illinois, while soliciting funds. The late Mr. Philander Smith had been a liberal donor to Asiatic Missions and had developed an interest in the work of the Church in the South. In making her gift to Dr. Gray, Mrs. Smith designated $10,500 for Walden Seminary. The trustees accepted the gift and gave it special recognition by changing the name of the struggling Walden Seminary to Philander Smith College.

Philander Smith was chartered as a four-year college on March 3, 1883. The first baccalaureate degree was conferred in 1888. The primary grades were dropped in 1924 and the high school department was dropped in 1936. From the beginning, Philander Smith played down industrial education and its faculty opposed all efforts to prepare their students as teachers in the so-called vocational arts. In 1933, the George R. Smith College of Sedalia, Missouri, formally merged with Philander Smith, which is, today, fully accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Philander Smith College has a rich Christian heritage and maintains a close relationship with the United Methodist Church, from which it receives substantial funding. It is also the only institution in Arkansas affiliated with the United Negro College Fund. It presently enrolls 620 students.

Pickens, William: (1881-1954) Born in South Carolina, Pickens graduated from Talladega College in Alabama and Yale University. He became an author of numerous books and established a successful career as a college professor. In 1920, he became Field Secretary and Director of the Branches for the NAACP. In 1942 he was designated Chief of the Interracial Section of the National Organization Division of the Treasury, becoming the first African American affiliated with the Treasury since the days of Reconstruction.

Pig Law: Passed in 1876 by the first Democratic-controlled Legislature in Mississippi after the end of Reconstruction, this law declared the theft of any property worth more than ten dollars, or of any kind of cattle or swine, to be punishable by up to five years in the state penitentiary. The law was aimed at reducing the epidemic of petty crime that knew few boundaries in the State during Reconstruction, as impoverished blacks were forced to resort to thievery just to feed their families. The law had the immediate effect of increasing the prison population from 272 in 1874 to 1,072 by 1877. It also made the convict lease system in the State a profitable enterprise. When the law was repealed in 1887 as poor whites began to exert political power (since the law applied to them as well as to poor blacks), the State's prison population dropped to around 500 inmates

Pinchback, Pinckney B. S.: (1832-1921) Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction, who also served as Governor of the State for one month from December 1872 to January 1873 after the white governor was removed from office. He was the only African American to hold this position during the Reconstruction era. Born a slave in Mississippi, Pinchback organized two regiments of black soldiers for the Union Army during the Civil War and became the inspector of customs for the port of New Orleans after the war. Although elected to the U. S. Senate in 1873, he was not permitted to take his seat. He later served again as surveyor of customs in New Orleans under the administration of President Chester A. Arthur.

Plessy v. Ferguson: The 1896 Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring segregated railroad facilities as long as such facilities were equal to each other. The Court essentially ruled that segregation did not constitute discrimination, thus establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine that was practiced until the Brown v. Board decision in 1954. For teacher-reviewed external web sites on Plessy, click here.

Plessy, Homer: (1862-1925) A light-skinned Creole who was arrested and jailed in 1892 for sitting in a Louisiana railroad car designated for white people only. Plessy took the case to court, claiming the law violated the 13th and 14th amendments. In 1896 the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the constitutionality of the Louisiana state law by an 8-1 majority. The resulting doctrine of "separate but equal" institutionalized segregation in the public schools of the United States.

Poll Tax: The 1896 Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld a Louisiana law requiring segregated railroad facilities as long as such facilities were equal to each other. The Court essentially ruled that segregation did not constitute discrimination, thus establishing the "separate but equal" doctrine that was practiced until the Brown v. Board decision in 1954. For teacher-reviewed external web sites on Plessy, click here.

Ponce de León, Juan: Juan Ponce de León was born in Tierra de Campos, Spain, in 1460. He accompanied Christopher Columbus on his second voyage of exploration in 1493. After serving in Hispaniola, he discovered gold on Puerto Rico in 1508. He conquered it, became its first governor, and grew wealthy from gold, land, and slaves. In 1512, after hearing Carib natives’ tales about the fabled island of the Fountain of Youth, "Bimini," he obtained permission to explore, conquer, and colonize it. After sailing from Cuba, on Easter Sunday (Pascua Florida), March 27, 1513, he sighted what he thought was a huge island. He landed near modern St. Augustine and claimed the land for Spain, naming it La Florida. He returned to Florida, near Charlotte Harbor or Tampa Bay, in 1521 with two ships, 200 settlers, domestic animals, and tools. Native Americans attacked the landing party as it began to build shelter, mortally wounding Ponce de León with an arrow. The expedition returned to Havana, Cuba, where he died.

Pone Bread: Enslaved Africans made mush from cornmeal and called it pone bread, a mush cake similar to mush patties baked in African for centuries.

Populist Party: This was a third-party, rural-based political movement that emerged in the 1890s in opposition to the concentrated power of corporations, merchants and bankers, railroad monopolies, and large planters. Also known as the People's Party, it polled over a million votes in the presidential campaign of 1892; in the presidential election of 1896, when it joined with the free-silver wing of the Democratic Party, in support of candidate William Jennings Bryan, the party lost much of its distinctive identity.

Powell, Barbara Johns: (1935-1991) An African-American woman who, as a teenager, played a principal role in changing the segregated school system in the U.S. through her actions leading to the Brown v. the Board of Education Supreme Court case. Barbara Johns was born in 1935 in New York City, where her parents, Violet and Robert Johns, had relocated to find work. Barbara was the oldest of five children, and had three brothers and one sister. She spent her toddler years in the small town of Farmville in Prince Edward County, Virginia, but moved to Washington, D.C., to begin her schooling when her mother found work with the government. After U.S. involvement in World War II (WWII) began and Barbara's father joined the army, Barbara and the other children returned to Prince Edward County to live with their grandparents, where their parents joined them following the war.

Barbara was the niece of Rev. Vernon Johns, who owned the store in Prince Edward County where her father worked. Rev. Johns was a "rabble-rouser" who was fired from his pulpit at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama (only to be replaced by Martin Luther King, Jr.). Barbara admired her uncle, learning a great deal from his outspoken viewpoints and emulating his way with words. Rev. Johns was undoubtedly an influence on April 23, 1951, when Barbara Johns held an unplanned assembly at Robert Russa Moton High School.

That morning, the principal of the all-black high school received an anonymous phone message advising him that two of his students were in trouble with the law. After his departure to attend to the matter, students were called to the auditorium for an emergency meeting. After beginning the meeting with the Lord's Prayer, 16-year-old Barbara "invited" the teachers to leave. She then persuaded her fellow students that they must act in order to remedy the unfair conditions in which they were receiving their education: the crowded classrooms, the tar paper shacks brought in for extra room, the dilapidated buses, the deteriorating books. Convincing them that they would not be punished if they acted together, Barbara led the students in deciding to strike until Prince Edward County's six white supervisors would agree to meet demands for a new school. They marched from the school to the county courthouse where they stated their ultimatum. The steps that this brave young woman had taken to improve the education of black children in Farmville, Virginia, eventually became an integral part of the famous Brown v. the Board of Education case, ultimately leading to the desegregation of schools in the United States.

Following the strike at Moton, Barbara's family feared for her life, so she was sent to Montgomery, Alabama, to stay with an uncle. She never again returned to Prince Edward County to live. After graduating from high school, Barbara attended Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. There, on December 31, 1953, she married William Powell, whom she had met in Farmville and with whom she had five children, four girls and one boy.

Barbara received a degree in Library Science from Drexel University in Philadelphia and was a school librarian in the Philadelphia public school system for 24 years. She did not speak often about that extraordinary experience in 1951. Although she helped to shape the education system of today, her family was largely unaware of how she felt about that period of her life. As her husband, Rev. William Powell, said of her at Hampden-Sydney College in 2001, "She was not out to seek glory. All she wanted was a school that was equal to the whites. That's all."

Barbara Johns Powell died of breast cancer in 1991 at the age of 56. Rev. Powell, in his 2001 lecture, reminded his listeners that it takes "a giant to stand up and say, 'This is wrong.' And we don't have too many giants." Our world was fortunate to have the courageous giant that was a petite 16-year-old in 1951.

This Encyclopedia Biography was submitted by Dorothy Dobson, a teacher at Edith Bowen School in Utah.
Barbara Johns Powell Lesson Activity Suggestions.

Prairie View A&M University: Prairie View A&M University is the second oldest institution of higher education in the state of Texas. The Texas state legislature established the school in 1878 as "an Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas for the benefit of Colored Youth." The Alta Vista Plantation owned by Jared Ellison Kirby, located east of Hempstead, Texas, was an ideal working farm that had substantial buildings suitable to an industrial school. Kirby's wife, Helen, had formerly operated a fashionable girls' school in the plantation house. On March 11, 1878, eight young black men became the first African Americans to enroll in a state-supported college in Texas. In the early years, the school offered 13 subjects at the elementary and secondary levels, and as late as 1915, fully three quarters of its students were females. In 1890, the school obtained land grant status and established an Agricultural Experiment Station. But it would take another ten years before the college was authorized to offer a four-year course of study. The first three degrees were granted in 1903, although no college level students were enrolled on the eve of WWI. The school instructed approximately 550 students that year, between the ages pf 13 to 20 years. Each student passed at least three hours each day in agriculture or industry, learning such skills as blacksmithing, printing, tailoring, broom making, shoemaking, sewing, dressmaking, and millinery skills. In the primary grades students studied U. S. history, geography, arithmetic, grammar, and industrial courses. At the secondary level, algebra, rhetoric, drawing, psychology, and education courses were also taught. All 46 of the faculty were black, composed of 31 men and 15 women. The Division of Graduate Study was organized in 1937, offering Master of Science degrees in agricultural economics, rural education, agricultural education, school administration and supervision, and rural sociology. The name Prairie View Normal and Industrial College was changed in 1945 to Prairie View University, and the school was authorized to offer all courses offered at the University of Texas. In 1947, the name of the institution changed to Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. Prairie View A&M was accepted for membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in December of 1958 and later received full accreditation by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. In the 1970s the name of the institution was again changed to Prairie View A&M University, and its status as an independent unit of the Texas A&M University System was reconfirmed. This state supported school enrolls today over 5,600 students.

Price, Florence: Born in Little Rock, Price became an important American composer. She composed over three hundred works and her songs and arrangements were performed by some of the most admired voices of her day. Her symphonies and chamber works were famous for incorporating the melodies of African-American spirituals with western classical orchestration.

Puritans: Members of the Church of England who hoped to "purify" it of rituals and to recover the simplicity of early Christianity, these nonconformists separated from the Anglican Church in the early 1600s. Some of them fled to Holland and some migrated as Pilgrims to the Plymouth Colony in 1620. Beginning in 1625, a great Puritan exodus sent 10,000 Puritans to New England America. Intent on establishing model communities in which the Puritan church would be interlocked closely with the government, citizenship was limited to members in good standing. Dissenters, such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, were banished from the colony. All manner of social frivolities were condemned, including dancing, music, acting, and even the celebration of Christmas. In 1692, six men and 14 women were executed during the infamous Salem Witch Trials. The early Puritans looked down upon business and even passed usury laws, which punished anyone loaned money at excessive rates of interest. But the opportunity to make money trading beaver pelts, cod fish, and ships supplies with England undermined the strictness of the Puritan community in time. By the 1720s, most dedicated Puritans had all but disappeared and most members had joined the Congregational Church. Although known for their intolerance of religious dissenters, Puritans valued education and hard work. They did not favor slavery, believing that all humans were spiritually equal. On the other hand, some slave-traders were Puritans. In 1643, five New England ships carried codfish to the Canary Island in exchange for sherry and madeira to be sold in England. One of the ships took payment in enslaved Africans, and this began the practice of New England shippers trading far and wide for anything of value, including slaves. By 1700, Boston and Newport were thriving slave-trading ports.