History of Grambling (Part 3 of 3)

AS THE SCHOOL GREW…

The growth of the Grambling community paralleled that of the school. Because there were so few schools for African- Americans in the region, the Allen Greene School became the education center for Blacks in the area. African-American farmers in the region sent their children to Grambling to study at the school that taught basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

In 1905, Adams split with the local farmers and ministers over the philosophical direction of the school. Adams wanted an industrial school patterned after Tuskegee Institute while the ministers preferred an institution grounded in the classics to train ministers. The dispute culminated in a lawsuit, which Adams won. Still, Adams, with the help of Lafayette Richmond, moved the school to its present site, 11/2 miles southeast of the Allen Greene location.

For more than 20 years, two schools operated in Grambling -one run by Charles P. Adams and the other by the local ministers and farmers. Eventually, the farmer / minister group closed its school. The school headed by Adams flourished and eventually received financial support from private donors, the Lincoln Parish school board and the Louisiana legislature.

The area that would eventually be the initially incorporated Grambling developed around Adams’ school. Most of those who lived in this new area had moved to Grambling to work at the university .A larger group of people, however, who comprised the Grambling community and who contributed to its vitality, were from church communities contiguous to the city.

Adams’ dream of a school became real, and the dispute with the local ministers and farmers diminished over the years. Many African-Americans moved to the Grambling area so their children could attend school.

“These migrants made up the nucleus of the town of Grambling,” wrote Gallot. “Zack Jackson built the first store in 1904, locating it on the north side of the rail- road tracks. Others who lived near Zack in the settlement were the families of Dennis Comwell, L. F. Richmond, George Hall, Dave Williams and Bill Nicholson. The Charles P. Adams family lived on campus.”

Grambling was basically a rural area with dirt trails as streets. “Few people, businesses, and roads were found in the town,” wrote Gallot. “Grambling itself, was not thought of as a town or even as a village. The population increased as people moved into the area in order to send their children to school and to either work or teach at the school… There was only one road through Grambling -the old Grambling Road from Ruston to Simsboro. This road intersected at the railroad tracks with a dirt road winding south to Highway 80.”

During this period of the 1930s, there were about six other businesses in Grambling, a barber and beauty shop, a cafe, three stores selling general/ grocery goods, a pressing shop and a “post office in a small room of an old dilapidated building on the main street,” Gallot noted.

The pressing shop was owned by B. T .Woodard, who would later become Grambling’s first mayor. according to Martha Bennette Woodard Andrus, Woodard’s daughter.

In the book Grambling’s First Mayor B. T. Woodard: The Man -The Movement, Andrus noted how her grandfather Elbert had moved the Woodard clan to Grambling from the Mt. Harmony community outside Ruston so the children could go to school. Many families had moved to Grambling like this. This demonstrated the importance of education to African-Americans in the area.

During this period, because of the school, more families began moving into the fledgling village. The school was growing, and in the early 1940’s, citizens began to see the need for basic municipal services. Andrus noted that as a result of a community meeting call by Rev. P.L. Harris, the Advisory Council was formed to address the concerns of the local citizens. Members of the council, which met monthly, were Harris, chairman, Woodard, vice chairman, Dr. Earl Lester Cole; Wallace E. Downs and Sylvester Brown. Because of Harris’ duties as minister of a local church, Woodard later assumed chairmanship of the council.

This group was responsible for spearheading efforts to get such community conveniences as street lights and sidewalks in the downtown area from the school to the rail period, because of the road tracks, Andrus school, more families wrote.

Both Andrus and Gallot noted the efforts of this council led to the move to become an official municipality, because there were some needs of the settlement (such as utilities) that only an incorporated village could get.

As Woodard and the council worked to get the village incorporated, they ran into another obstacle -there were no registered voters in Grambling. Few Blacks in the area had even voted since the Reconstruction days. There was some local opposition to both incorporation and registering to vote, but that was overcome, according to Andrus.

On September 9, 1953, the village of Grambling became the first all-Black municipality in the state to be officially incorporated.

Woodard was appointed mayor with the following citizens serving on the village council: W. E. Downs, Mike C. Osbome and Sylvester Brown. Earl Maxie was appointed village marshal. The population of this modest village at the time was about 700.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Grambling saw tremendous growth and improvements came at the same time that the university also was growing and being upgraded. There was a building boom in Louisiana at the two state-supported Black colleges -Grambling and Southern, in Baton Rouge. Like other southern states, Louisiana was pouring money into Black schools so “Blacks might decide not to apply for admission to the White colleges in the state,” Gallot wrote.

Grambling was officially declared a town in 1959 when the population surpassed 1,400. In the meantime, the c9uncil was busy annexing for growth and developing the town’s infrastructure -building utilities, streets and other necessities.

In 1993 when the population surpassed 5,000, Grambling was officially declared a city. Since its incorporation as a village in 1953, Grambling has more than quadrupled in size from the area immediately surrounding the university to one less than a mile from the official city limits of Ruston.

A town is more than a place on a map. A town is more than a set of census bureau statistics. It is more than a location from whence someone came or to where someone is going. It is more than houses and roads and institutions. A town is people-people, human beings, living, working, learning and playing.

Grambling has a noteworthy record of being a people-centered town. The efforts of its leaders in the past were so directed, and all current plans are geared to making and keeping Grambling a good place for people to live.

(Reprint from egrambling.com, “The City of Grambling: Historical Information”, 2005)
Reginald Owens is the retired chairman of the Department of Journalism at Louisiana Tech University where he was the inaugural holder of the F. Jay Taylor Endowed Chair of Journalism. He also served as director of the former Tech news bureau and associate director of university communication. He also taught at Grambling State University, where he was also publication director for The Gramblinite.