Sunday Sitdown
Dr. Thelma Douglass
Director, Mary Allen Museum
By Greg Ritchie
Messenger Reporter
The Messenger continues its Sunday Sitdown reports where we speak with our local pastors, educators, businesspeople, students and interesting people of all walks of life in Houston County. To see the full video interview, click on the video link below. The Messenger would like to thank Cutshaw Chevrolet in Grapeland for sponsoring this week’s edition.
Tell us about the history of Mary Allen College.
“In the 19th century there was some concern about schools, particularly in Texas, being based on some kind of religious background. Richard Allen, who was from Pittsburgh, was the Secretary of Education for the missions at the Presbyterian Church. He and his wife came to Crockett in the 1880’s and looked at the possibilities of what could be done to implement and bring this college to fruition. Originally, it was a seminary college to help people and it was primarily for females. That was something that was highly unusual, during that time, to be able to talk about educating women – particularly women of color. We had people coming from all over, even international students that came and participated with the university. Reverend Allen’s wife, Mary, was very instrumental in fighting for this. But she died, so when it did come into fruition in 1886, the college was named after her. Wow. This was really a milestone, something that was just fantastic. I find it depicts the essence of the way life should be – each of us working for one another, to help others to achieve.”
What are some of the activities of the Mary Allen Museum?
“We have created our wall of honor, that recognizes those who have attended this institution or if they graduated, worked or anything they had to do with Mary Allen seminary college. At first, when we started the wall of honor, we were thinking just about this facility but then we said, ‘Not everybody’s going to visit here.’ So we put the wall of honor on our website so everybody in the world can see those on the wall of honor. Founders Day is another time when we invite people to come and this year I was so grateful. We invited the high school students to come and participate from Mr. Clark’s AP history class. Why involve the students? We need to keep the legacy going. And it has to go down to the youth so they can keep the information going and the history of our beautiful, wonderful Houston County and Crockett. There’s rich, rich, rich history right here.”
Do you think our area will ever see another African American institute like Mary Allen College?
“Inch by inch and mile by mile, we take steps. Today we went to the high school. We held our College and Career Guidance event. We want to talk about things that will help them in their academic pursuits, whether it is a trade or whether they go into college. We want to have hands-on to help them do that. That’s the inch by inch. What can we say? Is there a possibility that maybe we can restore and bring such an institution back? That is a question to be asked. And the thing about it, it’s going to take the unity of a community to come together and say, ‘Let’s do this.’ If you take the word unity, you take the vowels out of it, it’s going to say ‘you’ and ‘I.’ We are going to have to come together as a community to establish the educational component so that we can bring things back to our community, to help students beyond high school.”
Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]
