John R. Gibson | The Hidden History

[Music] hi i'm joan marshall director of the bryan museum i want to welcome you here today as we launch our first talk in a series exploring african-american contributions to texas history the idea for the series really came out of the response we got from exhibiting ted ellis painting in june of this year called free at last and the public response was so interesting and enthusiastic that we thought we would explore more african-american history and the contributions that have been so significant so sam is here today to launch that series i want to welcome you thank you for being here sam has been a long time member supporter part of our delegato board and also is born on the island welcome tim thank you uh it's so wonderful to be here with you at the bryan museum in galveston texas uh in 2018 the number one movie in the country was black panther and everyone wanted to go to wakanda forever you know just recently uh chadwick boseman uh transitioned he brought that character to life and everybody needs a superhero but when i think about superheroes and uh individuals with superpowers this story of uh professor j.r gibson is a story of a superhero from a real place called galveston texas and it's a real story of service and commitment to the community so this hidden history of texas we're going to start this journey in this first inaugural presentation on professor j.r gibson uh who's buried actually in hitchcock uh which uh you know even though i'm born on the island i have ties to hitchcock the big city well i'm curious sam why do you think professor gibson isn't more well known well one of the things that in society unfortunately we've been culturally conditioned to undervalue the contributions of certain individuals and in this moment in this movement in this time more these stories are beginning to surface stories of african-americans contributions all throughout the country but specifically here in texas in galveston there are many individuals of course everybody knows the galveston giant jack johnson but what they don't know is jack johnson was a student of professor j.r gibson now uh in an article that i will reference uh professor gibson said he didn't teach him how to fight but he was a student there he didn't graduate from central but both of his parents were working there and we'll get to that in the story as we dig deeper into the story of this amazing individual and his family so one of the things while i was walking through a cemetery in hitchcock i ran across the headstone of john r gibson and it said died december 15 1948 first principal of central high school the first negro high school in texas and when i read those words i was just amazed that he was buried there in hitchcock at bangland memorial cemetery and i had heard professors gibson's name saw his picture over at old central because they had his picture in the old library old central culture cultural center on 27th and m there but it the fact that this information was on that headstone uh piqued my curiosity a little bit more so buried in hitchcock was not only the remains of this individual but i feel the story of his amazing contribution so from that headstone i said if if he died december 15th it had to be an obituary so we uh with the assistance of sharon gillins who helped uh with my powerpoint presentation she's a fabulous researcher the newspaper article december 13th 1948 so there was not anything on the 16th or 17th with regards to a obituary i would have thought if he died on the 15th then there must be something on the 16th or 17th announcing his death well when we backed up a few days we found out that he actually died on december 12th and not december 15th so while these historic resources and cemeteries are valuable starting points sometimes the information is not absolutely accurate accurate but you can go back and we found this newspaper article uh and on the front page of the galveston daily news december 13 1948 island negro educator dies john r gibson 83 also was a diplomat so in the article when i read through the article it talked about all of his accomplishments that he was the founder and principal of central high school he was a counselor general in in monrovia liberia a longtime member of reedy chapel a 32nd degree mason uh past worthy patron of the royal archer and a shriner president of relief association for establishment of old folks home the organizer of the negro division of the boy scouts founder and president of the color teacher city association of galveston and more importantly he was a husband a father and a citizen and mentor to others so december 15th that date is the day his funeral he actually that his funeral was actually december 15th at 2 o'clock so that's how that date ended up getting there so from that article i also did a a search online for at ancestry.com and sharon has taught me how to do this where you see the death certificate so she put the death certificate in the uh powerpoint you could see and on the death certificate there's so much important information there uh it has that he was a widow it has his mother and father's name which is important to the family research nimrod gibson and helen smith and that he was born in virginia and it has on april 1st 1865 so this is amazing but also at the top how long had he lived at his residence 63 years so in 1948 he had been there 63 years meaning he had been at that home since 1885. where did he live uh on broadway 9 19 uh avenue j is what they had at the time they didn't call it broadway and the amazing thing about that we just had the anniversary of the 1900 storm september 8th uh 120 years professor gibson and his family survived that storm it is just amazing that he survived that storm and if you look at uh the debris line i watched a special one that the other day people that were behind it were spared where a lot of people on the other side of that line their homes and their lives were destroyed so the fact that he was living on broadway had he been living closer toward the beach side he and his family may not have survived so we have this amazing story because he survived that 1900 storm and he was called upon to to help um rebuild galveston at that time like many other other individuals so his daughter grace gibson was a homec teacher at central i found out she is the informant on the uh death certificate and that's a great deal of information so when you're doing your family research you want to look through these records it's important so now that that we have his date of death and we saw that he was principal and retired in 1936 from the article i went back and sharon found saturday may 30th 1936 article that's titled friend to man guiding motive of negro principal here who has served school 50 years on his wall he had he had a poem or part of a poem that said let me live in a house by the side of the road and be a friend to man so professor gibson's office he was being interviewed upon his retirement by uh joe webb so what's so important about this article is that this is direct quotes from professor gibson and in the article uh he talks about his life and he talks about jack johnson and and other students and individuals that uh that he had professional relationships with and then he he mentions that he moved to ohio when he was 11 years old in that article so when we look back for the records now that we know that he was in ohio we could look for census records and we can look for that data uh and you can draw more information from that so when you go back to the 1870 census according to uh the newspaper the first newspaper article he was 83 but when you go back to the 1870 census you find out he was 16 years old so instead of being 83 when professor gibson passed away he was actually 94. he was actually older 11 years older than we anticipated so he was an individual from 1854 to 1948. it's not it's not just women who want to conceal their age right right well you know with the 1900 storm and the destruction of so many records i guess you could take a decade off you could be younger so here this is an amazing piece of information because what it tells us even with the april first date 1865 you think he was born before the end of the civil war in virginia but shortly thereafter you have emancipation in juneteenth here in texas but when you go back further to 1854 that means him and his parents were enslaved individuals and in the article he said they moved to ohio when he was 11. so they moved to ohio in 1865 and then in 1870 uh his dad is listed at 40 his mom is listed at 38 and he's listed at 16. so the gibson family lived in green uh township clark county ohio and when you look at 1860 records compared to 1870 in 1860 we do not believe that there were any free people of color in virginia so him being born in virginia in 1860 lets us know that at that time he was an enslaved individual but but by 1870 the family had moved to ohio and they were free people in 1880 he's listed at 25 years old and depending on what month that they take the census he may or may not had a birthday yet so that's why and it's not always exactly 10 years because it all depends on who's recording the records and if it information so his dad is listed at 49 and his mom looks like she's listed at 45. so to your point she was 38 in 1870 but she was only 45 in 1880 seven years but uh so here the family unit but more importantly it lists him uh that he's in college or in school uh so he was 25 years old they were still living in clark county and he was a college student attending wilberforce university we found that out from the article and the thing about uh wilberforce wilberforce was established by the ame church in 1856 so even before the end of the civil war this first private historically black black college or university hbcu was established in 1856 and we'll have more on that history after the program but uh professor gibson was an 1882 graduate of wilberforce you'll see on the slide uh a photo or drawing of the university uh in that he graduated in 1882 and he remained an active member of the ame church throughout his life and i believe he was committed to uh here at the reedy african methodist episcopal church because they were his foundation from ohio the other thing about professor gibson and someone of his caliber is that he would be called on often to speak in in the public uh being the leader that he was and in 1895 after frederick douglass passed away he uh was part of a program at reedy chapel uh this article march 12 1895 lists professor gibson and other uh uh speakers that uh spoke about frederick douglass including norris wright cuny we also have the 1900 census when i talked about them surviving this census report was taken before september so in it it lists j.r gibson and his family they were living at 919 broadway mr gibson is living with his wife addie and and their four children and they actually had six children four living it lists that they were married 14 years but with further research what i found is that they were married september 2nd 1885 so they were coming up on their 15-year anniversary but at the time of the census they had been married 14 years and this also lists mr gibson at 51 years old so in this instance he's actually listed older in 1900 as though his birthday was 1849 i don't know how they did that do you know why they moved to galveston well he came down here for the the opportunity to teach he got a job teaching galveston being a major port city education was important to him and i believe that professor gibson committed 50 years of over 50 years of his life to education because as a former enslaved individual he knew how important education was so when he when he came here as a teacher uh then later a principal at the east end uh school before he became the principal at uh central in uh 1887 and actually through the records i found out that he was one of the founders and there actually was another principle before him yes really inquiring minds one another right so so central was still the first high school in the state of texas and he was one of the founders the first principal of central was actually cj warring and oftentimes these individuals will be listed by their first initials but it was in miss collins book that i found that cj warren his name was champion j warren so then i was able to go to the census reports and find he and his wife cora in the census report and they got married in 1885. so i don't know what was going on in texas in 1885 but gibson got married in 85 warren got married in 85 there was a lot of partying going on on the island uh they were not always 83. so in 1885 uh they were young men and their wives and they were building their families and shortly after that uh mr miss uh gibson's oldest son was born roscoe then his daughter teresa then his daughter grace and um john gibson jr was the youngest now he had six i don't know where the other two where they were born in that number his wife had had six but only four lived about this picture is actually of central in 1905 after it was rebuilt the the thing i love about this this picture uh of these nicholas clayton buildings or awards it's just magnificent right and this this this high school was to show place the african-american house it was almost like a university but this wasn't the first location of central where was the first yeah the first location was at 16th and l so this was not the first first location this is this is at 26 and m the first central school only went up to the ninth grade so they had two elementary schools that went up to the fourth grade and then central went from the fifth to the ninth so that's the beginning of the education of the higher grades or high school and then this 1900 storm photo shows central the damage at central high school looking north from ursulin academy showing the rec negro high school in you know just months after the census of 1900 which i was just speaking of in less than a week after his anniversary his 15th anniversary since he was married september 2nd in 1885 to his wife adeline the tragic storm hits and he was asked to serve his community at that time as a red cross representative clara burton called upon gibson to ensure that relief supplies were distributed to the african-american community over the objections of many galveston citizens so we see here that there was a fight for resources and some didn't want to share but gibson was called upon to help distribute clara burton barton made sure that everybody was being helped and that's important that in times of tragedy that we come together professor gibson also was the founder uh uh here it says the founder and first principal but he also served as the librarian for the color branch of the rosenberg library so it was first established in 1904 and dedicated in 1905 his annual salary was 150 uh as the librarian there in 1905. as i said he was a mentor to many uh galvestonians and uh one of them being justin mcguire dance she was on his staff in 1922. so jesse mcguire dent will will speak about her in november in more detail but she was on his staff in 1922 and miss dent also passed away in 1948 the same year that professor gibson did but she passed in march and he died in december so these iconic figures these his heroic superheroes of galveston passed away in the same year in this photo on the slide you'll see several students and initially you may think that jessie mcguire was one of the students but if you notice the the female students are dressed similar and also with the male students but then uh miss mcguire is dressed differently because she's a staff member by 1922. she went to howard university i believe she graduated 1913 or 14 and then she came back to galveston and became a teacher so uh other students as i mentioned earlier uh that he had jack johnson and dudley woodard was one of his students and he was the dean of the math department at howard university so there are so many other individuals alan perkins was in the first graduating class of central and he was one of the first attorneys african-american attorneys in galveston and he was one of professor gibson's students so he was an advocate for the welfare children you know this article here public welfare body holds discussion on business and schools professor gibson was involved in every effort in the city aimed at improving the education and facilities for the students at central high school under his leadership central was ranked third among the high schools in the state for african-american students in this article which i believe was 1932 october 8 1932. he also was a fighter for equality this article from april 12 1932 talks about professor gibson being the president of the colored teachers city association when they were negotiating for their pension fund so before his 50 year of acknowledgement as principal they honored him just being here on the island from 1882 to 1933 so the first school year would have been fall of 1882 to the spring of 1883 and in may of 1933 they were honoring him for his 50 years of service to the community yeah 50 years is an astonishing career who works who works within years at a single institution in the in and again into his 80s because he was uh let's see 54 he would have been 79 in 30 33 when they were talking about this so by uh 36 he was 82 you know in in 1935 the last year of professor gibson's principalship at central there was a petition started to name central high school gibson high school but it failed and they didn't do it but why not honor an individual like this that has contributed so much to your community i know we have ball high school and and i understand many of the philanthropic families that donated money to help build these institutions i believe uh mr ball and his family committed fifty thousand dollars to the initial purchase and building of a public school uh and that it would be named after him but you know there are questions around what we honor and how we remember things and how did they build that wealth to give it but you have a person like professor gibson that gave his life and i think it would have been a great honor at that time to put his name on the building so again uh we go back and we could correct the records to show his date of birth april 1st 1854 showing that he's 94 years old by december of 1948 and i'm not sure if his daughter knew exactly if april 1st was his birthday in 1854 but of course with him saying he was 11 years old when his family moved in 1865 we know that he he would have been born in that year 1854 or around that time so professor gibson is buried in the historic gold bond memorial is now mainland memorial but it was originally on the death certificate gold bond memorial cemetery in hitchcock and despite the magnitude of his contributions to the field of education the last photo that i want to show of professor gibson the first image was kind of cloudy but we found another image that the rosenberg library has a lifetime of service to the community of galveston the strength in his face he commanded respect and his influence on the lives of thousands of galvestonians there is no public recognition of his tireless work in the city he called home to which he dedicated his life's work and i think it's time for us now to recognize john rufus gibson as our superhero i agree galveston thank you sam that was great i i find it fascinating that he attended wilberforce the first historically black college in the country that must have been uh quite a feat how many how many african americans at that time went to college yes of course the abolitionists that were working in the north at that time helped to establish wilberforce in 1856 and our special guest today will be president pinker dr pinkert will be on to answer questions after the program uh and to give us the history of wilberforce uh so if you if you're watching and you have a question type it in the chat and we'll try to get to those questions and he's going to give us about five minutes of the history i was so glad that he accepted our invitation to join us because education is so important and we need individuals our young people to understand the sacrifices that were made and again i believe that is why professor gibson dedicated his life to the students and to the children of galveston because he knew how important education was thank you well let's go to the question and answer you

Channel: The Bryan Museum

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Length: 26min 23sec (1583 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020