By Linda P. Campbell
lcampbell@star-telegram.com
History is memories of the past recorded by the living for those in the future to remember whence they came.
But what happens when those who are capturing history get it wrong?
The Near South Side of Fort Worth is home to Evans Plaza, a community gathering space that's part of an ambitious public project designed to rejuvenate the area around Evans Avenue and Rosedale Street.
The plaza features a gallery of granite plaques -- with pictures and short biographies -- commemorating people who've contributed to the neighborhood's history and culture: from Dr. Marion Brooks to photographer Calvin Littlejohn to educator Hazel Harvey Peace.
A separate timeline focusing on African-Americans in U.S. and Texas history is etched in limestone sections around the plaza.
The entry for 1881 reads: "ON DECEMBER 24th, MS. SUE HUFFMAN WAS DRAWN FROM PRIVATE SCHOOL TEACHING TO BECOME THE FIRST AFRICAN AMERICAN TO BEAR THE TITLE OF SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS OF THE CITY OF FORT WORTH."
I learned about this snippet of Fort Worth history in June when the school board named longtime administrator Walter Dansby to be interim superintendent. I was told that he wasn't actually the first African-American to head the city's public schools, that Sue Huffman was.
It was a mystery to me why her status wasn't more widely known.
The real mystery, though, turns out to be how she became memorialized in Fort Worth's African-American history: Sue Huffman was indeed superintendent in 1881, the available documentation shows, but she almost certainly was white.
The error came to light when I asked local activist Eddie Griffin to write an essay about Huffman to run on the
Star-Telegram's Op-Ed page for Juneteenth.
Huffman served only a short time, as there was consternation over paying for public schools. After a school tax election in 1882, a new school board was appointed and Alexander Hogg was hired as superintendent. (
bit.ly/qZGhm1)
But it seemed plausible that the woman appointed in December 1881 to head the schools could have been African-American, given, as Griffin explained, that many blacks in Fort Worth at that time owned land and businesses.
But
Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy questioned the accuracy of this historical "fact" about Huffman.
When we all started gathering information, here's what turned up:
A 1993 letter from a Fort Worth school district administrator to a woman in Michigan saying archives showed that Huffman was among 27 white applicants who tested for a teaching job in 1882 and she was assigned to first grade. First-grade teachers and the principal of the city's black schools were paid $75 a month, the letter noted.
A 1904
Bohemian magazine article saying Huffman attended Fort Worth High School, Galveston Female Academy and Sam Houston Normal Institute in Huntsville and was elected in 1901 to represent the Kansas City chapter at the national meeting of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
A copy of the 1860 Census at the Fort Worth Library listing Huffman and her parents, Philip A. and Caroline Huffman, as white.
Sam Houston State University, which Sam Houston Normal Institute became, shows that Huffman was a graduate and Peabody Medal winner as salutatorian in 1880.
According to the
Bohemian, she was principal of "Normal Institutes" in Decatur, Mineola, Weatherford and Dallas after leaving the Fort Worth schools. She married twice, to Ed Warren and Frank Brady, and was widowed twice. She also worked on the
Fort Worth Record editorial staff.
It's not clear how she made it into the Evans Plaza timeline with a mistaken racial designation. A volunteer advisory committee gathered information that was turned over to city staffers, according to DeCee Cornish, a member of the Tarrant Area Guild of Storytellers who worked on the committee. He said that information was pulled together over several years and that there was turnover among those involved. Cornish said Huffman isn't in his personal notes.
Patrina Newton, a senior planner with the city, said librarians speculated that Sam Houston Normal Institute might have been confused with Samuel Huston College, a school for African-Americans in Austin that later became Huston-Tillotson University.
I wasn't able to pin down who among the city staffers involved at the time was responsible for editing and verifying the accuracy of the timeline's final version.
But that's not as important as getting the mistake corrected so that those who come after get an accurate picture of what came before.Linda P. Campbell is a Star-Telegram editorial writer.817-390-7867 @LindaPCampbell
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