Antq Photo Album-Sumner High School - African American History 1920s - St. Louis
- SIGNED
- [St. Louis, Missouri] , 1947
[St. Louis, Missouri], 1947. Good. 8¾” x 12”. Blue cloth over boards, post-bound with decorative string tie. Pp. [90] with handwritten entries, 48 photographs, 118 clipped yearbook images and 27 items of ephemera adhered to pages and inside boards. Photos range from around 1” x 1” to 5½” x 3¼” and nearly all are captioned. Good due to front board detached with moderate loss; several leaves chipped at edges and lightly toned or soiled. Contents generally very good.
This is a wonderful memory book compiled by a 1928 graduate of an African American high school in St. Louis, Martha Woods. Filled with detailed observations and inscriptions, original photographs and clippings from school publications, the book celebrates important years in a young Black woman's life.
We couldn't find much online about Martha Jane Woods (later Fentress and Martin). She was born in 1908, later lived in Detroit, was known to sing in church choirs, and died in 1986. This impressive creation covers her time at Sumner High School, the first for African Americans west of the Mississippi, and a bit into her college years. It's largely her rendition of the 1928 Sumner yearbook, enlivened by ephemera and original photos as well as her handwritten entries, well-wishes from teachers and friends – all highly legible, rich with research value and eloquently worded.
This commercial School Girl's Record Book has plenty of writing prompts that Martha dutifully filled out, including her class motto (“I'll Find a Way or Make One”), a two-page list of all her schoolmates, and her favored subjects – “I have named all of my studies, because they are all favorites, but the ones I am going to major in are History, English and art.” She also listed favorite books (“Oh! So many”) such as Pride and Prejudice, The Tempest and “The Dark Princess by Du Bois.” Clippings from the yearbook show that she served as vice president of the eight-girl-strong “Renaissance Art Club,” and there are images and bios of school faculty, sports teams, girls' chorus and several other clubs. Friends' inscriptions include full names and addresses, and one offered congratulations “for your prodigious achievement in finishing high school in three years” as well as her “qualities which make for fine womanhood: neatness, friendliness, truthfulness, scholarship and sincerity of purpose.” One teacher wrote that “I expect for you, because of your genial disposition, your effective work, your dogged persistence, your high ideals, and . . . your boundless ambition, a useful, successful career.” Other friends avowed “to love you dearly and to respect you mentally” and that “you have imprinted your ability and honesty upon the blackboard of time.”
Other clippings include an original poem by classmate Margaret Emory, a list of “Class Statistics” and two pages of a charming comic set in a high school that featured Black characters. The book has Martha's impressive report cards, letters admitting her to both the College of the City of Detroit and Michigan State Normal College, and her invitations to dances of the “Semper Firmi Socii Club,” a group of Black youth in Detroit, in 1929 and 1930. She transcribed her schoolmates' “Class History” and “Prophecy,” as well as what appears to be the entirety of the commencement program. There are clipped yearbook images of the class of 1928 (in a group and individually) as well as 16 “Vashon Graduates,” arranged into a heart. Vashon was the second Black high school in St. Louis and opened in 1927. Original photographs reveal friends and family in St. Louis and dapper young men in Detroit, and there's a 1947 program for a concert by pioneering Trinidadian jazz musician, television and film star Hazel Scott. Martha also observed that “we are just about to enter into that unknown world where we can take it or leave, no one is going to force anything upon us, no one is giving anything away . . . we know nothing about this world . . . but nevertheless we are terribly anxious to begin in it.”
A lovely, creative memory book, as well as research trove.
This is a wonderful memory book compiled by a 1928 graduate of an African American high school in St. Louis, Martha Woods. Filled with detailed observations and inscriptions, original photographs and clippings from school publications, the book celebrates important years in a young Black woman's life.
We couldn't find much online about Martha Jane Woods (later Fentress and Martin). She was born in 1908, later lived in Detroit, was known to sing in church choirs, and died in 1986. This impressive creation covers her time at Sumner High School, the first for African Americans west of the Mississippi, and a bit into her college years. It's largely her rendition of the 1928 Sumner yearbook, enlivened by ephemera and original photos as well as her handwritten entries, well-wishes from teachers and friends – all highly legible, rich with research value and eloquently worded.
This commercial School Girl's Record Book has plenty of writing prompts that Martha dutifully filled out, including her class motto (“I'll Find a Way or Make One”), a two-page list of all her schoolmates, and her favored subjects – “I have named all of my studies, because they are all favorites, but the ones I am going to major in are History, English and art.” She also listed favorite books (“Oh! So many”) such as Pride and Prejudice, The Tempest and “The Dark Princess by Du Bois.” Clippings from the yearbook show that she served as vice president of the eight-girl-strong “Renaissance Art Club,” and there are images and bios of school faculty, sports teams, girls' chorus and several other clubs. Friends' inscriptions include full names and addresses, and one offered congratulations “for your prodigious achievement in finishing high school in three years” as well as her “qualities which make for fine womanhood: neatness, friendliness, truthfulness, scholarship and sincerity of purpose.” One teacher wrote that “I expect for you, because of your genial disposition, your effective work, your dogged persistence, your high ideals, and . . . your boundless ambition, a useful, successful career.” Other friends avowed “to love you dearly and to respect you mentally” and that “you have imprinted your ability and honesty upon the blackboard of time.”
Other clippings include an original poem by classmate Margaret Emory, a list of “Class Statistics” and two pages of a charming comic set in a high school that featured Black characters. The book has Martha's impressive report cards, letters admitting her to both the College of the City of Detroit and Michigan State Normal College, and her invitations to dances of the “Semper Firmi Socii Club,” a group of Black youth in Detroit, in 1929 and 1930. She transcribed her schoolmates' “Class History” and “Prophecy,” as well as what appears to be the entirety of the commencement program. There are clipped yearbook images of the class of 1928 (in a group and individually) as well as 16 “Vashon Graduates,” arranged into a heart. Vashon was the second Black high school in St. Louis and opened in 1927. Original photographs reveal friends and family in St. Louis and dapper young men in Detroit, and there's a 1947 program for a concert by pioneering Trinidadian jazz musician, television and film star Hazel Scott. Martha also observed that “we are just about to enter into that unknown world where we can take it or leave, no one is going to force anything upon us, no one is giving anything away . . . we know nothing about this world . . . but nevertheless we are terribly anxious to begin in it.”
A lovely, creative memory book, as well as research trove.