The College of Education is excited to welcome Alexandria Russell, Ph.D. for the 2024 Witten Lecture: A Sesquicentennial Celebration of the South Carolina State Normal School. Prior to the lecture, a poem will be read by Jennifer Bartell Boykin, Columbia Poet Laureate, and a musical selection will be performed by Samuel McWhite. This lecture will serve as the opening for the Museum of Education’s fall exhibit, A History of The South Carolina State Normal School. The exhibit will run through December is and free and open to the public. Christian Anderson, professor of higher education and director of the Museum of Education, shares on the Normal School’s history:
“The history of the South Carolina State Normal School is a remarkable story, but one that is not well-known. The school opened September 1, 1874 and closed May 31, 1877 so it existed less than three years. Yet in that short time it prepared teachers such as Celia Dial Saxon, Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, Matilda Pinckney and others who taught in Columbia and beyond.”
Russell is currently the Interim Helaine B. Allen Vice President of Education and External Engagement at Boston Symphony Orchestra and the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute Non-Resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.. In 2018, she earned a Ph.D. in History from the Department of History at the University of South Carolina. We share the following interview with Russell as a preview to the upcoming lecture:
Q: Tell us how you began researching Normal Schools?
A: My first encounter with Normal Schools began when I was a freshman at the College of Charleston. I became an intern at the Avery Research Center, formally Avery Normal Institute, under the leadership of Marvin Dulaney, Ph.D., who is now the President of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. At Avery I learned about the significance of Normal Schools in producing teachers to educate Black communities emerging from enslavement in the South.
When I became a graduate student at the University of South Carolina in the History Department, my research of educator Celia Dial Saxon revealed that she was among the first Black students to attend classes on USC’s (then S.C. College’s) campus as part of the S.C. State Normal School. 150 years later, we celebrate the foundational training that she and others received at the SC State Normal School because of the resounding impact that it made for generations of children in South Carolina.
Q: Describe the learning environment in a Normal School? What did the Normal School do for its students? What opportunities did it open for them?
A: While some Normal Schools were established and led by missionary societies in the aftermath of the Civil War during the Reconstruction era, others like the S.C. State Normal School were established by state legislatures. Normal Schools were about the business of professionalizing educators, and they had a similar mission to the School of Education at University of South Carolina. Because literacy was denied to the masses of Black people prior to the late nineteenth century, African Americans strove to use education as a means of economic and social uplift. Educators were revered because of their central role in providing access and opportunities to children and families while navigating the harsh realities of the Jim Crow era. For young students like Celia Dial Saxon, they could take their teaching certificates and begin educating multi-generational members of their communities. In addition to providing a pivotal function in Black communities, Normal Schools also gave young African Americans like Celia Dial Saxon a professional career trajectory and a baseline of pedagogical knowledge that they could continue to expand through experience and further study.
Q: How does your research on Celia Dial Saxon intersect with the SC Normal School?
A: My research reveals that Celia Dial Saxon is the most memorialized African American woman in South Carolina. Growing up in Columbia, I was well aware of the Saxon Homes public housing, but I had no idea that it was a named memorial of an African American woman. On my journey to find out who Celia was and why she had been publicly honored in this way, I learned that she was an extraordinary and beloved educator whose professional journey began right here at USC as a student in the SC Normal School.
Q: Tell us about your nonprofit, Black Women Legacies? How does your research benefit communities in South Carolina and beyond?
A: Black Women Legacies is a digital project that maps past and present memorials of African American women beginning in the United States with plans to expand globally. The non-profit that I founded in South Carolina sustains the development and growth of the first and only website centered around African American women’s public history. This digital project is rooted in my national research and scholarship, which began with my dissertation in the University of South Carolina’s History Department. Black Women Legacies: Public History Sites Seen & Unseen, my first book publication by University of Illinois Press, is the culmination of my research that spans from the 1890s to the present and will be released in December 2024. Communities across South Carolina and beyond will have access to a free database to explore how memorializers have impacted their physical and cultural landscapes of public commemoration for generations.
Q: Tell us a little about your experience receiving the SC Preservation Service Award. What did that mean to you and your work?
A: It was a tremendous honor to receive the South Carolina Preservation Award, which was presented to me by Governor Henry McMaster in 2023 for my research on African American women’s public history. My research reveals that there are more traditional public memorials like house museums and historical markers of African American women in Richland County than any other locale in the United States. The Harriet Barber House, the [Celia] Mann-Simons Site, and the Modjeska Simkins House, along with historical markers the like those erected for Dr. Matilda Evans and Celia Dial Saxon all disseminate Black history through the lives and legacies of African American women. It brings me great pride to be able to amplify the stories of those who have been memorialized and the communities that come together to create these public sites. I’m also extremely grateful to memorializer and community activist Catherine Fleming Bruce who nominated me for this award.
The 2024 Witten Lecture will be held September 5, 2024 with a reception at 4 p.m. in the Museum of Education and the lecture following at 5 p.m. in Rutledge College. Please RSVP.