Miriam: Avery Normal Institute was extremely important for Frank
DeCosta's intellectual, cultural, and personal development. He was the youngest
of eleven children, and his father died when he was less than a year old,
leaving a widow with few financial resources. Anna DeCosta borrowed money to
keep the house from foreclosure, and paid the loan off in a year. A graduate of
Avery, she struggled to pay the tuition at that private secondary school, so
she sent Frank, first, to a public school and,
then, to Avery.
The school had a
faculty that included young graduates of historically Black colleges, such as
Fisk and Talladega,
who served as role models and mentors for students like Frank. The principal,
Benjamin F. Cox, was a Fisk graduate who encouraged Frank to attend college.
The first college graduate in his family, my father constantly struggled to
obtain higher education, and that struggle is one of the salient themes of Sojourn
in Kaduna.
Rudy: His first college
graduation was from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania
with a degree in mathematics. What was so significant about Lincoln in those years? There were such
schools as Fisk and Howard.
Miriam: Lincoln University had an illustrious history. First of all, it was the
first HCBU, having been founded as a private institution in 1854, while most of
the others were not founded until after the Civil War. Dr. Horace Mann Bond,
who became Lincoln's first African American president in 1945, wrote in his
book, Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania
(reprinted by GrantHouse Publishers in 2014) that Lincoln was the first
institution in the world to offer higher education to African-descended youth. Lincoln had many notable
graduates, such as Thurgood Marshall, Langston Hughes, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and
Kwame Nkrumah, and it produced 20% of this country's Black physicians and 10%
of its lawyers.
I think that Frank
also had one or more mentors in Charleston who
persuaded him to attend Lincoln, in spite of the
fact that Avery's principal and some teachers were graduates of Fisk and Talladega. Later, Frank
was instrumental in encouraging Avery students to attend his alma mater. I met
one native Charlestonian, a dentist in Ghana
for over forty years, who told me that Frank DeCosta had persuaded him to go to
Lincoln.
Finally, the
DeCostas and Huberts (Beautine's family) were East Coast people. (Blacks from
the coastal Southern States migrated primarily up the East Coast to Washington, New York, and
New England, while those from the middle Southern States, such as Mississippi, Louisiana,
and Tennessee, migrated to Missouri,
Illinois, and Ohio.) As a consequence, students from the middle
region were more likely to attend Talladega,
Tougaloo, and Fisk; natives of the coastal region, however, went to Hampton,
Howard and Lincoln—one of the few HBCUs in the North.
Frank also probably
chose Lincoln for its proximity to New York, to which his
oldest brother (his surrogate father) and half of his siblings migrated in the
1920s.
Rudy: Some of the
difficulties in developing quality HBCUs in the South were attracting
professors with Ph.D.s and the willingness to pay competitive salaries. These
were problems Frank encountered at both South Carolina
and Alabama State. What impact did his long hours of
dedicated work and low pay have on his wife and kids, and his health?
Miriam: As I indicated in Sojourn, my parents were
partners in every way. When Frank was out of work in New
York in the summer of 1934, Beautine, who was pregnant with me, worked
in Savannah.
When Frank took a leave from Avery to complete his master's degree at Columbia in 1939, Beautine remained in Charleston to work at Avery. When Frank began
doctoral studies in 1941 at the University
of Pennsylvania, Beautine, accompanied
by their two children, completed her master's degree at Atlanta University.
My brother and I
were never aware that our parents struggled financially, because we had a rich
childhood and adolescence. We always knew that we were our parents' first
priority, and they provided us with a wealth of experiences. For example, my
father helped my brother build a soap box and entered him—the first Black—in a
soap box derby; he also got up at 5 a.m. to take Frank, Jr., aged 12, on a
paper route. Daddy taught me to read before I entered school, and tutored me in
geometry every day for an hour. My parents took Frank and me, aged 14 and 15,
to play in the national tournament of the American Tennis Assoc. in Wilberforce, Ohio;
encouraged our interest in basketball and swimming; and took us to Atlantic Beach, SC
annually.
I didn't discover
my parents' financial limitations—low salaries and overwhelming work loads—until
I started doing research for the book. Our family lived simply and frugally. We
stayed with family members while Mother and Daddy were in school, and we lived
in rented faculty quarters for most of our life. Once, we lived for almost six
months in a student dormitory, and my parents didn't purchase a home until I
was a teenager.
In spite of their
limited financial resources, they gave generously of themselves and the little
that they had. They took in a sick brother, an elderly father, and widowed
sisters; Daddy brought several of his nephews to study at S.
C. State;
they tithed at their churches; and Daddy gave a third of his salary ($5,000) to
Morgan State.
 |
| Frank A. DeCosta circa 1930 |
Rudy: What was in Frank
’s character and career possibilities that made him go from an undergraduate degree in mathematics to education statistics and administration and the teaching of teachers? His Ph.D. was not in mathematics, was it?
Miriam: Although Frank's B. A. was in mathematics, he took a number of liberal arts courses, studied four languages—Spanish, French, German, and Latin—excelled in athletics, and worked on campus during the academic year and with his brother's construction company in the summer.
Both his master's and doctorate were in education, so he took courses in statistics (indicative of his mathematical frame of mind) and administration. His goals were to become a principal, college professor, dean, and, hopefully, college president. His students and colleagues noted that he was an excellent administrator, though very rigorous.
Rudy: In Sojourn in Kaduna, you have thirty or more photos of family, friends, and acquaintances. What was the source of these photos? Were they all part of the family archives? They suggest that the biography is about more than your father Frank, but also the people, the experiences, and the people that enriched his life.
Miriam: Most of the photos are ones that I have collected from my parents, aunt/godmother, and cousin. I am the DeCosta family historian, so I have compiled the family archives and created a family tree on Ancestry.com with lots of photos.
As a former painter and collector of Black art, I am a very visual person. A photographic historian can tell a lot from the dress, posture, activity, objects, and milieu of a person or subject. For instance, I wrote a 25-page article about Frank's gay brother with little more to go on than his photographic album.
* * * * *
 |
| Frank and replacement Ibitomi |
In Sojourn, I used photographs to provide a visual context for Frank's life. For example, the photo on p. 122 is indicative of the close working relationship between Frank and the Nigerian whom he trained to replace him.
Rudy: Your mother Beautine followed your father Frank to Northern Nigeria. He arrived April 1962 and she sometime before Xmas 1962? The letters he wrote before that December were actually to her? What can you say about the style of the letters, depending on whom they were sent?
Miriam: Between late March, when Frank arrived in Nigeria, and late June, when Beautine joined him, most of his letters were written to her. She stayed in Baltimore to complete the school year and to pack up items that they would need in Nigeria. He was the letter writer in their relationship, and, throughout his life, he complained about her failure to write as often as he. For Frank, letter writing was a way of cementing his marriage, assuaging his loneliness, and avoiding the temptation of an affair, for he had very traditional views about the sanctity of marriage and he was often separated from his wife. Yet, his “love letters” lack the intimacy and warmth that one associates with the genre.
All of his letters, even the ones to his wife and children, reflect his character: formal, organized, cerebral, matter-of-fact, and somewhat cold. He was perceptive, so his letters to friends, colleagues, and extended family members were similar; they recounted details about his work, people, and activities.
Beautine, on the other hand, was a more creative writer and storyteller, so her letters were warm, funny, anecdotal, descriptive, and flirty.
 |
| Frank (suit) and Beautine (middle) with their male staff and their wives |
Rudy: In a few letters, Frank spoke of acquiring African art pieces for himself, family, and friends, even Martin D. Jenkins, then the president of Morgan State College. Did he follow through on that? Do you or the family still have those pieces? I do not recall any photos of that artwork.
Miriam: Frank acquired a substantial art collection from many African countries. As he indicated in his letters, he took great pleasure out of bartering with vendors.
I collect art, so I knew the value of his collection. I contacted Dr. Gabriel Tenabe, Director of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art at Morgan, about donating the collection, and he explained that the objects would, first, have to be appraised. I took the art objects to my condo in DC and arranged for Kwaku Ofori-Ansa, an appraiser with Sankofa Edu-Cultural Consultancy, to do an appraisal. He came to my home, took photos, and sent me four copies of his appraisal—for the museum, IRS, me, and the Frank A. DeCosta Collection at Avery. Then I donated the collection to Morgan's Museum of Art on behalf of Frank and Beautine DeCosta. The appraisal was sufficient to offset the profit from the sale of Mother's house.
I kept some of the pieces—two drums, four beautifully sculptured heads, a Benin bronze statue, three ivory sculptures, two sets of book ends, and a few smaller works. One of the sculptures from Kenya, “Bust of a Boy,” has a value of $850-$950, and a “Royal Figure,” a bronze from Benin, Nigeria, has a value of $3,500 to $4,500. I kept those pages of the appraisal to pass down (with the art) to my children.
I should, indeed, have included in Sojourn a couple of photos of Frank's art collection, but, unfortunately, I didn't think of that.
Rudy: One of the educational dilemmas Frank hints at in his letters and you in your narrative is that the Hausa/Fulani possessed a socio-cultural system (because of its fundamental Islam) that undermined its rule, namely, the essential rejection of the Western educational system. This situation caused a shortage of Hausa/Fulani teachers. This shortage was shored up by Igbo and Yoruba teachers and professors, which underlay a fundamental tribal conflict and ultimately led to the Biafran War. With his fondness for the Hausa-Fulani, their religion, and culture, would Frank be surprised and shocked that that this culturally backward situation still exists over a half century later?
Miriam: Absolutely, though he lived through the Biafran War and he had letters from Nigerian friends that alluded to the increase in tribal conflicts. Actually, the situation has worsened with the imposition of Sharia law in Northern Nigeria and the emergence of the Boko Haram, a terrorist group bent on eradicating Western institutions and murdering Christians as well as traditional Muslims.
 |
| Ahmadu Bello |
 |
| Nnamdi Azikiwe |
Rudy: Frank exchanged a number of fond letters with Nnamdi “Zik”
Azikiwe, whom he had met at Lincoln,
while they were both students. I don’t quite recall, did they actually meet
during Frank’s USAID two-year tour, or later?
Miriam: No and that was one of the disappointments of his stay in
Nigeria.
Actually, Azikiwe came to Kaduna
for a day while Frank was there, but neither knew at that time of the other's
presence in the city. Although the president invited Frank to visit him in Lagos, which was about the same distance from Kaduna as New York is
from Miami, Frank could not leave his work in Kaduna.
Rudy: The biography provides a glimpse into the development of
black college education (HBCUs) in your father’s work at South Carolina State
and Alabama State. It reminded me of Morgan State
College’s push in the
1960s to hire black professors with doctorate degrees in philosophy. Its
philosophy department, founded by Richard McKinney, had been more or less a
department of religion. And that Morgan itself and other black college had been
teacher colleges with few or no professors with doctorate degrees. Could you
speak a bit more on the development of black colleges in the South and the role
Frank DeCosta played in that development?
Miriam: I was shocked to discover in my research that, in 1943, there were only 128 Black Ph.D.s in the whole country and
that, when Frank went to S.
C. State
in late 1945, there were no faculty members with doctorates at the college.
However, I can tell you from personal knowledge that the faculty members at
State whom I knew were some of the most dedicated and hard-working professors
that I have known. Most of them taught six days a week, had evening classes,
served on four or five committees, planned programs, and advised several
student organizations.
So Frank had a
serious problem when he started the graduate program. Faculty with master's
degrees can teach undergraduate courses, but only faculty with doctorates can
teach graduate courses. There was no money in the budget to hire faculty with
doctorates, so Frank hired summer school professors with doctorates, and the
summer school enrollment was large enough to pay these professors.
When Frank started
the Graduate School at Morgan, he didn't have this
problem because area universities had professors with doctorates whom he could
hire part-time, and Morgan had the funds for him to recruit teachers.
One of the topics
that I wanted to underscore in Sojourn was the struggle—lack of funds,
separation from family, obligation to support his family, and the pressures of
work—that Frank had in obtaining all of his degrees and, especially, the
doctorate. I didn't realize, when I was growing up, all the obstacles that my
father had to surmount. He and Mother did a good job in shielding their
children from their hardships.
Rudy: Did your publisher print the photos and lay out the book
as well as you would have liked?
Miriam: George Grant, who owns GrantHouse with his wife, has
published over 150 books, including my last three: Black Memphis Landmarks,
Travel in Egypt, and Sojourn in Kaduna, as well as Horace Mann
Bond's book (mentioned above). He is a very hard worker and a perfectionist,
who followed my every wish and I am grateful to him. Actually, I laid out the
book and the photos.
I could write 30
pages on my attempts to get this book published. I wanted the University of South Carolina
Press to publish it, because of Frank's Charleston
origin, connection to Avery, and decade at S. C. State. One reader loved it and the
other, a scholar in colonial African history (a racist), hated it, so
the editor sent it to a third reader who
was just as bad as the second—racist, condescending, and patronizing. I was
outraged, so I withdrew the manuscript. With the help of other
friends/scholars, I tried other presses with no success.
With the advent of
e-books and other technology, the publishing industry has changed so much. (I
could write a book on the subject!) The bottom line, as with so many U. S. industries,
is money; in choosing works by African Americans, editors want trash or a
celebrity (as either author or subject). I also received lots of rejection letters
from editors for Erotique Noir, which turned out to be a classic, and
for Daughters of the Diaspora, so I chose, at the suggestion of a friend,
a Jamaican press, which did a beautiful job with the work.
I was afraid that I
wouldn't have the energy to promote the book. The proceeds don't interest me
but, after all my research, I want my father's contributions to Black education
to be remembered, because he is representative of so many unheralded college
professors and scholars who toiled in the vineyard to educate Black Southern
youth at a time when the doors of other institutions were closed to them.
The other thing
that went into my decision was the negative experience that I had with Notable
Black Memphians. I want to make my research and writing accessible to
everyone who's interested. After all that work on the book, I was shocked when
the New York
publisher put it on the market for $135 (and it hasn't gone down), which
defeated my purpose. Consequently, I really couldn't ask people to buy the book.
On the other hand, Black Memphis Landmarks, which GrantHouse published,
has sold very well, and I'm delighted when people tell me, “That's the
elementary school that I went to.” “My children were born in Collins Chapel
Hospital,” and “I
remember that church in my neighborhood.”
Dr. George Grant,
who has served as library director at many universities throughout the country,
including Morgan, is providing a valuable service, and he is not concerned
about profit.
Rudy: Amazon is not yet
carrying Sojourn in Kaduna. The book is available for $20 at
Miriam DeCosta-Willis / 585 S.
Greer Street, Unit 901 / Memphis, TN 38111 / (901) 323-8870 /decosta-willis@att.net Is
there a discount if multiple copies are ordered? Have you scheduled any
readings?
Miriam: I have tried innumerable times to put Sojourn and
two other books of mine on Amazon, but, every time I add a photo of the book,
it won't go through and I haven't had time to contact the company.
There is so much
that I have yet to do. Herbert Rogers has given me some excellent suggestions,
but I simply have not had time to follow through. Also, this is the part of
publishing that I don't particularly like—the marketing.
Yes, there is a
discount of $5.00 for multiple copies, and the books are available to book
stores for $12.00.
Sir Ahmadu Bello (June
12, 1910 – January 15, 1966) was a Nigerian politician, and was the first premier
of the Northern Nigeria region from 1954-1966.
He was the Sardauna of
Sokoto and one of
the prominent leaders in Northern Nigeria alongside Abubakar Tafawa Balewa,
both of whom were prominent in negotiations about the region's place in an
independent Nigeria.
As leader of the Northern People's Congress, he dominated Nigerian politics
throughout the early Nigerian Federation and the First Nigerian
Republic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmadu_Bello
Chief Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe, P.C. (16 November 1904
– 11 May 1996), usually referred to as Nnamdi Azikiwe, was one of the leading
figures of modern Nigerian nationalism. He was head of state of Nigeria from
1963 to 1966. He served as the second and last Governor-General from 1960 to
1963 and the first President of Nigeria from 1963 to 1966, holding the
presidency throughout the Nigerian
First Republic.
* *
* * *
Frank Hamilton Bowles,
Frank A DeCosta, and Carnegie Commission on Higher Education. Between Two Worlds: A Profile of Negro
Higher Education. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1971.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0070100241/ref=nosim/?tag=chickenajourn-20
http://www.worldcat.org/title/between-two-worlds-a-profile-of-negro-higher-education/oclc/141937
* *
* * *
 |
| Horace Mann Bond |
 |
| Miriam DeCosta-Willis |
* *
* * *
Horace Mann Bond. Education for Freedom: A History of Lincoln University, Pennsylvania.
PA: Lincoln University,
1976
* *
* * *
“Doctoral Degree Awards to African Americans Reach
Another All-Time High.” Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education.
* *
* * *
“Recent Trends in
Black Higher Education.” October 15th, 2008—“First, some positive news. According to the Journal
of Blacks in Higher Education (Winter 2007-2008 issue), as of 2007, about 4
million African Americans hold a bachelor’s degree, representing 18.5 percent
of all blacks 25 years and older. Of that group, nearly one million (952,000)
also hold master’s degrees. About 166,000 African Americans have earned
professional degrees in fields such as medicine, business, engineering and law.
And approximately 111,000 blacks in America now hold PhD’s”—Dr. Manning Marble.. Hudson Valley Press Online.
* *
* * *
A Profile of
Black/African American Doctorate Recipients—African Americans earned a total of 1,821
doctorates from U.S.
institutions in the period of July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007. This represented 7
percent of all research doctoral degrees awarded to U.S. citizens in that year. . . .
• Over the past ten years, there has been a modest
increase in the proportion of U.S.
citizen doctorate recipients who were African American (from 5 percent in 1997
to 7 percent in 2007). . .
• In 2007, 38 percent of African American doctorate
recipients received their degrees in education, 17 percent in the social
sciences, 4 percent in engineering, and 6 percent in the physical sciences. In
comparison, 18 percent of white doctorates received a doctorate in education,
18 percent in the social sciences, 13 percent in physical sciences, and 8
percent in engineering.
* *
* * *
Miriam DeCosta-Willis “The Life and Legacy of Beautine Hubert DeCosta-Lee.” (Obituary). ““My mother and grandmother were great liars. Whether it was telling us that drinking cod liver oil would make us swim like fishes or swearing that if we were bad, we would be sold to the gypsies, both of them knew the power of prevarication.”
* * * * *
 |
| Miriam DeCosta-Willis |
* * * * *
Other Books By Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Miriam Decosta-Willis,
editor. Daughters of the Diaspora: Afra-Hispanic Writers.
Daughters of the
Diaspora features the creative writing of 20 Hispanophone women of African
descent, as well as the interpretive essays of 15 literary critics. The
collection is unique in its combination of genres, including poetry, short
stories, essays, excerpts from novels and personal narratives, many of which
are being translated into English for the first time. They address issues of
ethnicity, sexuality, social class and self-representation and in so doing
shape a revolutionary discourse that questions and subverts historical
assumptions and literary conventions. Miriam DeCosta-Willis's comprehensive
Introduction, biographical sketches of the authors and their chronological
arrangement within the text, provide an accessible history of the evolution of
an Afra-Hispanic literary tradition in the Caribbean, Africa and Latin America. The book will be useful as textbook in
courses in Africana Studies, Women's Studies, Caribbean, Latina and Latin American Studies as well as
courses in literature and the humanities.
* *
* * *
Miriam DeCosta-Willis.
Black Memphis Landmarks.
Black
Memphis Landmarks is a must read book for anyone interested in the numerous
contributions that African Americans have made to the development of Memphis.
Dr. DeCosta-Willis has documented many of the landmarks and achievements made
by Black people in Memphis.—Frank J. Banks,
co-founder Banks, Finley, Thomas & White, CPA
* *
* * *
Miriam
DeCosta-Willis. Notable Black Memphians.
This biographical and historical study by Miriam DeCosta-Willis (PhD,
Johns Hopkins University and the first African American faculty member of
Memphis State University) traces the evolution of a major Southern city through
the lives of men and women who overcame social and economic barriers to create
artistic works, found institutions, and obtain leadership positions that
enabled them to shape their community. Documenting the accomplishments of
Memphians who were born between 1795 and 1972, it contains photographs and
biographical sketches of 223 individuals (as well as brief notes on 122
others), such as musicians Isaac Hayes and Aretha Franklin, activists Ida B.
Wells and Benjamin L. Hooks, politicians Harold Ford Sr. and Jr., writers
Sutton Griggs and Jerome Eric Dickey, and Bishop Charles Mason and Archbishop
James Lyke—all of whom were born in Memphis or lived in the city for over a
decade. . . .
* *
* * *
Miriam
DeCosta-Willis, editor. The Memphis Diary of Ida B.
Wells
Foreword by Mary
Helen Washington. Afterword by Dorothy Sterling.
DeCosta-Willis makes it
possible to look back in a new way into the character of wells, and, more than
that, into the daily life of African-Americans a century ago.— Chicago
Tribune
Wells and DeCosta-Willis
join together across time in a scholarly collaborative dance of sisterhood to
produce a work that not only holds an insightful mirror to the past, but could
be used as a guidepost for African-American and other women today in living totally
self-defined lives.—Tri-State
Defender
A unique look at the life o
an independent, unmarried African-American woman coping with financial
hardships, romantic entanglements, sexism, and racism . . . A substantial
contribution to African-American Studies—Publisher Weekly
* *
* * *
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
, Reginald Martin, and Roseann P. Bell, editors. Erotique Noire/Black Erotica.
The editors are to be congratulated for amassing a
collection of erotica worthy in its own right because of the writers showcased,
among them Alice Walker, Chester Himes, Gloria Naylor, Jewelle Gomez, Charles
Blockson, Audre Lorde, and Essex Hemphill. Coverage is not limited to African
American writers but includes African, Caribbean American, and Latin American
writers, whether straight or gay, of prose, poetry, or fiction. For some
authors, this anthology features their first piece of erotic writing. Readers
will be familiar with other selections, for example, Lorde's "Uses of the
Erotic: The Erotic as Power." As a whole, this book successfully challenges
stereotypical notions. about black erotica and serves up delightful sexual
tidbits for just about everyone's taste.—Faye
A. Chadwell, Univ. of South Carolina Lib., Columbia
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Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Table
