Born to Educate: Galen Lankford

 “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Matthew 5:9 

Galen Lankford 

Small town legends have a confounding habit of showing up just different from the rest of us. He mowed his yard in a jacket and tie, and somehow, dress shoes that never showed grass stains.  And consider his eternal resting place: Section E, Block 60, Oak Hill Cemetery in Butler, MO. The plot is a knoll overlooking forested valleys that are now exploding with autumn color. The grave itself is functional and plain, like the century long life lived by the earthly remains interred here. A few sprigs of crabgrass claw the nearby barren soil. Infrequent and sporadic clusters of wildflowers provide the only real ground cover. Since 2013 this non-descript narrow sliver of planet earth has served as the final resting place of Galen Lankford, longtime Superintendent of the Monroe City, MO Public Schools. 

He wasn’t politically fashionable. He wasn’t politically expedient or politically correct. What he was - in the best sense of the concept – was morally grounded; always limited by the parameters of his personal code of ethics. In a memoir written to his two daughters shortly before his passing at 100 years of age, Lankford laid out in his own words the hope that his life somehow taught the emblematized lesson that individuals can find strength within themselves only after they acknowledge the limits to what they can accomplish alone. Mr. Lankford was, if anything, a team player. 

In his 24-year tenure, from 1952 to 1976, Mr. Lankford oversaw three monumental shifts that affected the Monroe City public schools, going from the onerous to the vexatious: the reorganizations and consolidation of 34 rural districts into Monroe City R-1 School District, the racial integration and closing of Washington School, and the closure and the absorption of Holy Rosary High School into the Monroe City schools. "He had a lot on his plate," summarizes lifelong Monroe City resident Chris Quinn.

Galen Lankford learned early in life from a no-nonsense, patently stubborn but hopelessly optimistic mother that if a man hacks away at enough windmills, a few will fall. Born October 23, 1912, Lankford said, “I spent the first 5 or 6 years at my mother’s knee, where I was told about God, and what He expected of me. Her lectures about honesty, fairness and friendship were given to help me grow up a ‘good’ boy.'” He was raised on the family farm outside of Adrian, located in the west central region of Missouri.

Lankford started school at six years of age. He attended a one room schoolhouse, Pleasant Valley School, a mile from his family's farm. He skipped two grades in elementary school. “Not only did I begin first grade here (Pleasant Valley School),” Lankford recalled, “but this is where I later began my teaching career. Same building.” 

In the summer of 1924, the family farmhouse burned to the ground, necessitating a move to nearby Adrian, just as Lankford entered the eighth grade. In four years of high school he lettered in football, basketball, track, and tennis - every sport the school offered. He graduated from Adrian High School, second in a class of 37, in June 1929. 

Lankford 1953

As a fifteen-year-old high school junior Lankford began a state sponsored two-year program to become certified as an elementary school teacher. In October 1929, five months after his high school graduation, the stock market crashed, and the nation fell into the Great Depression. Lankford was 16 years of age with state certification as a rural school elementary teacher and no job. He spent the next two years working in a produce market.    

To him, an education was both a weapon and a reward. In the main hallway of Adrian High School hung a picture of Lankford’s Great-Grandfather who was the first Superintendent of the Adrian Public Schools. Lankford recalled, “my thought at that time was he was a good man with a good job.  In 1930 and 1931 jobs were difficult to find because it was the depression years.  However, in 1931 I was hired as a teacher at the same one room school where I had gone.  I taught at Pleasant Valley for 8 years, 1931-1939.” He had not yet taken a college course and he was all of 18 years of age when he began his teaching career. He taught two younger brothers and a younger sister. It really was not that bad, he later recalled. He also noted he was still residing in the family farmhouse alongside his pupil/siblings. 

What he thought would be a short novitiate turned into an eight-year residence. Teaching in a rural, one room schoolhouse was not an easy job.  Lankford explained, “Because all eight grades had to be taught, only ten or fifteen minutes were allowed for a single class lesson.  A rural teacher had to build the fires, carry in the coal, carry out the ashes, wash the windows, clean the blackboards, sweep the floors, and carry in the drinking water from outside daily.  Sometimes the floor had to be mopped also and all these things needed to be done after the teaching routine was finished. Then there was the night work. There was lesson planning and paper grading, as well as reports to the school board and the county superintendent of schools at Butler, the county seat.” 

Lankford spent every summer of his eight-year tenure in the one room school setting attending college at nearby Central Missouri State Teacher's College in Warrensburg. In May 1940, he earned his bachelor’s degree and accepted a position as the principal at Brunswick, MO Elementary school. He held that post for three years. In the Spring of 1943, “the Board of Education at Louisiana, MO called and asked for me to be their High School Principal and mathematics teacher.  I signed a contract and spent many happy years in Louisiana from 1943 to 1952.”

In August 1940, Lankford married Thelma Boyd of Butler, MO. They had met on the Central Missouri Teacher’s College’s campus. The young teacher settled into the life of a family man, looking to continue to move up the professional education ladder. “She was the dream of my life,” Lankford recalled, several years after Thelma’s 2002 passing. “We had 62 wonderful years together and raised a beautiful family.  She was my pillar of strength, loving and nurturing.  Her devotion knew no limits, and she spent her life taking care of her family and others.” The union produced two daughters, Carolyn Ann and Trudy Jean and eventually Lankford would live to hold his 4 grandchildren and 8 great grandchildren.  

In February 1952, Lankford was hired as the Superintendent of the Monroe City, MO School District.  He held the job for 24 years. Upon his retirement, a thankful community named one of its most prized possessions, the school football field, after its longtime leader. Lankford called it, “one of my proudest moments.”

After his retirement from the Superintendency, Lankford worked as a real estate salesman for the Warren See Agency. He retired for good at age 84. In retirement, he seldom missed a home MC Panther’s sporting event and was a regular at school plays and musical concerts.

Lankford’s daughter, Trudy, recalls even after he retired, her dad was very involved in civic activities. “Anything to help or support the school, he was behind it.” Slippers and a pipe were never part of his retirement plans. 

“Even after he moved first into assisted living," Trudy recalls, "and after mom passed away, the last eight years of his life in the nursing home, he still stayed very connected to the community. Was still active and in his own way productive. He would listen to the high school ball games on the radio, and he had a constant stream of regular visitors. His body finally wore out, but his mind never did. He was very (mentally) sharp to the very end.”

“Dad had a lot of chances to leave Monroe City and move to bigger districts which would’ve paid more money,” the youngest of Lankford’s daughters continues. “But this became his home.” He and Monroe City were now sewn together, and no one would ever tear them apart. 

“I don't think I remember anyone who called him by his first name, always Mr. Lankford. That says a lot about how respected he was,” recalls longtime Monroe City resident Kelly Mayes Zeiger. 

Lankford 1976

Steve Delaporte remembers. “My dad, Bob Delaporte, graduated from Monroe City High School in 1957. It was where the middle school is now. According to Dad, Mr. Lankford hardly ever called school off for snow. He and his wife lived in the white house right there next to the school. Dad and his friends would say ‘Mr. Lankford, we are getting a bunch of snow tonight are you calling school off?"’ And Mr. Lankford would say, "Boys, if I cannot make it to school, I will call it off."

Danny Donovan attended the Monroe City schools in the late 1950’s and through the decade of the 60’s. Late in Lankford’s life, Donovan had a chance encounter with him. “I saw him over at Quincy Mall one day sitting by the fountain,” Donovan recalls. “We sat and chatted a bit. He told me that no matter where he went in the world (it) seemed like someone knew him. I would imagine so after educating guessing 3500+ kids. Not a lot of kids in this world can say they had the same Superintendent all 12 years (of school), but lot of us in Monroe City can.”

In a collarless-shirt world, Lankford inalterably wore a suit coat and tie. On those few occasions when he would break down and go casual, he kept the top button on his leisure shirt tightly fastened. Monroe City grad Greg Frankenbach says, “I never saw Mr. Lankford when he was not wearing a coat and tie.” MCHS retired teacher Debra Quinn confirms, “he mowed his yard in the same attire.”

On August 19, 2003, Thelma, his wife of 62 years passed away. He grieved, his family said, but he kept his spirit and zest for life.  

Mr. Lankford's 100th birthday, in 2012, was a local day of celebration. He had a statement that was read on that special day, “I am grateful to many, but especially the good Lord that I could spend 100 years in America.  The road from 1912 to 2012 has been long and a bit rough at times, but it has been a happy one.  Thank you, all of you, who have helped me along this road.”

******

Starting in 1955, Lankford oversaw the herculean task of “reorganization” of 31 rural elementary schools and three small high schools into the newly proposed enlarged Monroe City R-1 School District.  His long fought for success spawned a huge influx of students. His reorganization efforts had necessitated constituent supported tax increases for new facilities and buildings. But the huge upheaval to many of the rural communities surrounding Monroe City resonated like an earthquake of a 5.0 magnitude. Lankford’s daughter Trudy remembers her dad, during that tumultuous time, did not run scared, but he did run faster.   

Lankford used his well-known persuasive personality to win over voter approval for the newly reorganized district. His diligence led to the tax increases that built two elementary school additions, an expanded cafeteria, and the final piece of the ambitious building campaign, a new high school building. 

There was something about his voice, old-timers recall. It was loud and baritone, but it was also smooth. Galen Lankford was a people person, and he was a salesman, although he always claimed not a very good one. He liked a snooker player's strategic approach - it wasn't just the placement of your shot, but how bad you left things for the guy you were playing against, in this instance, neighboring districts with cannibalistic plans to swoop in and swallow up the teetering Monroe City district. Sure, the tax increase will hurt, he told Monroe Citians, but 45 kids in a first-grade classroom will hurt more. Or worse, do you want your kids bussed to Palmyra? 

In 1953, when Lankford came to town, the 31 area rural school districts surrounding Monroe City were sending their high school students to Monroe City and paying tuition for the service. The districts were too small to operate their own high schools but were desperate to hold on to their elementary schools. 

“When I was a child,” recalled Lankford, “most rural children only got an 8th grade education.  And they were needed on the farm.  But by this time (the 1950s) tractors had improved farming techniques.  Now individual farmers were able to farm many more acres by themselves and could afford to send their children to high school.” Monroe City was the closest option, the rural farmers of the outlying hamlets had to get their child what most of their generation never had, a high school diploma.

But, Lankford explained, it was not cheap. “This change of how rural education was being accomplished was creating a real problem in Monroe City.  The Monroe City schools were becoming crowded and new buildings were needed.  Yet, the Monroe City School District, which then encompassed only the City of Monroe, did not have a tax base sufficient to vote for the bonds necessary for these new buildings. The students the Monroe City Schools were servicing needed to be in one large unit or district.  To do this the rural schools needed to be voted into a new reorganized district.  Monroe City had tried to accomplish this before but failed.  The town residents saw the need, but the rural patrons were bitterly opposed.  Paying tuition was much cheaper than being in a district where they would be taxed and ultimately have to pay for buildings and all other expenses of operations.”

Howe 1957

Bob Howe, for a dozen years, served as high school principal in Monroe City and was the right-hand man to his mentor, Mr. Lankford. Howe graduated from high school in 1948 and from college in 1952. He then served a two-year obligation in the military before beginning his teaching career at age 24. “I spent one year in Revere, MO and then moved over to Labelle,” recalls Howe, seated at the dining room table of his apartment located within an assisted living center in North Kansas City, MO suburb of Gladstone.  He is 92 years of age. 

“After those two years, I came to Monroe City as a high school principal. That would have been 1957 and I was at the ripe old age of 26. I had a lot to learn,” he says today, “but the people of Monroe City were very patient with me, and Mr. Lankford was a great mentor.” 

Howe departed Monroe City in 1969 and took the job as the head principal at a brand-new high school, North Kansas City. “It had been a rural area that was starting to become very (sub)urban,” shares Howe, “and we really grew together as a school and a community."

Howe retired from his NKC principalship in 1985 and became the Executive Director for the Missouri Secondary School Principals Association (MSSPA), he and his wife then moving to Columbia, MO, the city hosting the organization’s home office. 

Howe led the MSSPA until 1995, when having reached the age of 65, he retired from his second career and moved back to North Kansas City. Today he and his wife, both 92, reside in their assisted living facility, where they have domiciled for the past two years. “We’re both still very active,” he says. “I still drive but not at night and not very far. I just got tired of cutting grass.” 

Known for his low-key approach and his dry sense of humor, Howe was a perfect sidekick to balance out the personality of the intense and mercurial Lankford. “Mr. Lankford was a worrier,” Howe recalls. “He worried about everything that was his school. Was the building safe? Were the lunches tasty and the kids getting enough to eat? Was the curriculum what it should be? Were the teachers paid enough? Were the farmers taxed too much? Were the sports teams winning? He just never stopped worrying about his school.”

When the reorganization crisis hit, Howe remembers, the stakes were high. Howe says that there likely would not be a Monroe City School District today if it were not for the vision of Galen Lankford. “Every citizen and student in Monroe City should this morning say a prayer of thanks to Mr. Lankford for the great school and education they are getting. Because, if not for him, the school district would have been carved up and if the school went away, I doubt today there would even be a town of Monroe City left. You lose the school; you lose the town.”

It was survival of the fit and not time for niceties, says Howe. “Reorganization did not just hit Monroe City in the 1950’s, it was state mandated, and it was happening all over northeast Missouri.” The district needed a leader with mettle and Lankford, says Howe, showed he possessed it in abundance. “Mr. Lankford fought off the neighboring school districts that were recruiting the rural schools in our area. Paris, Palmyra, Mark Twain, Hannibal and even Philadelphia, all made offers to our rural districts to jump ship.”

As if the rural voters weren’t enough of a problem, other rural school districts now began to talk county wide reorganization. In the 1960s Clark County, Scotland County, Knox County, Schuyler County and Putnam County, all located north of Monroe City and boarding the state of Iowa, took this route. Small school districts would bind together with the school building residing in a central town, often already the county seat. This type of geographical centering would have left Monroe City without a school building, its students bussed to a nearby county seat.

“Monroe City District encompassed parts of 3 counties,” Lankford recalled, “namely Monroe, Ralls, and Marion, prior to the election.  Some districts which were in the center of their county wanted “county units”.  If approved these 'county units' would take areas adjacent to Monroe City away from the planned Monroe City District.  The proposal of 'county units' certainly gave Monroe City something to worry about.  If adopted, 'county units' meant the proposed Monroe City School District would be left with less rural area than it had served in years gone by.  High School students had by choice come to Monroe City for their education from as far out as 12 or more miles in all directions.  The future of the new school district was in danger.” 

In later years, Lankford recalled the blowback he took. “Each year the need for reorganization became greater and the opposition became more vocal and even bitter. I was authorized by the Board to proceed with plans for reorganizing the district.  It was going to be a hot and bitter issue and no doubt would alienate many patrons and taxpayers in the rural areas.  Plans for the election had to be made.  Once boundary lines for the new district were established, a publicity campaign was created to inform all the people of the facts and reasons behind the election.  This involved many meetings in the various rural schools and talking to the people.” 

Bob Howe 2018

Energy and imagination were the requisites Lankford needed. And he needed both now. “All in all, the planning took months of work.” he said. “Even some of the merchants in town were opposed because they had been told by their rural customers that they would not continue to trade with them if plans for reorganization were not dropped.  Threatening letters reached my office warning me that my life was in danger.  The Board was predicting that a new Superintendent would need to be hired after the election because (of) all the patrons angry with me. I was the public face of change, and boy do rural Missourians not like change.” 

“Scott Conway,” Bob Howe states today, “owned the lumberyard in town but he was also the Board president for many years. There would need to be 34 rural districts that would be consolidated into Monroe City. Think of that. That’s a huge number and these were all communities that were fiercely proud of their school and desperate to hold onto their school. Mr. Lankford and Mr. Conway were not welcomed at all in the rural meetings they attended. But they went anyway, and they kept going back. Mr. Lankford and Mr. Conway spoke to the citizens and the parents of all 34 districts, many of them numerous times. That was Mr. Lankford’s strength. He now knew how to talk to people, but he also knew how to listen. Both he and Scott were great listeners.”

Lankford told Howe that Monroe City had to come up with a new collaborative approach, - get the rural constituents to stop talking past each other instead of to each other.

Lankford recalled the icy reception, but says he didn’t take it personal, that he appreciated the passion the local communities had for their schools, a similar point of pride he had experienced as an 18-year-old novice teaching in a one room rural schoolhouse. “Going into the rural schools to talk and explain the issues became very difficult.  Tempers rose at some of the meetings and Mr. Scott Conway, Board president, and I were on occasion asked to leave – sometimes not to politely, as I recall.”

But cooler heads prevailed and eventually the vote was to accept the reorganization. The rural districts really had no choice. But that doesn’t mean they liked it. Lankford recalled that the tension the day of the vote was palpable. But the reorganization vote passed because its time had come.

“The day of the vote on the reorganization issue was August 11, 1959,” Lankford recalled, years later. “A favorable vote was received, and the terrible ordeal was over.”  

Lankford never forgot the day of the reorganization vote that left his knees shaking. “Had the voters not chosen to create this new district or if county units had been the chosen way of redistricting,” he remembered, “I can easily see Monroe City’s schools and the town itself slowly degenerating as county seat cities like Palmyra and Paris passed us by.” 

Bob Howe says that the internal personal strength of Galen Lankford and his resolute belief in the importance of public education allowed in the end for the triumph and the survival of the Monroe City Schools, and perhaps, the town itself. “The students came and there was little time for preparation or reflection. But eventually Mr. Lankford made the rural students feel at first accepted and then welcomed and finally needed. And we all became one. They should build a monument to Mr. Lankford for that accomplishment. Every student who walks across the graduation stage each spring should say they’re thanks to that man. So, I guess, maybe he does have a monument - every graduate of Monroe City High.”

The new district was officially named Monroe City R-l School District. Even more monumental than what Lankford accomplished is what he endured. He had humbly and gracefully steered the community through the jungle that took nearly four tortuous years of negotiations to navigate. 

****

Lankford 2012

Now with the boundary lines of the R-1 District permanently established, plans needed to be made for new school buildings to house the increased enrollment.  “Most of the rural schools were closed prior to the reorganization,” Lankford stated, “but now the remaining ones would also close.” It was the local Board of Education’s decision to keep the largest rural attendance units operating until adequate facilities could be built. “It took two years,” Lankford recalled. “In the interim the elementary level schools at White Franklin, Rensselaer, Indian Creek, and Hunnewell continued to operate.”

Lankford now found himself spread even more thin. “My responsibilities now extended to these schools recently added to our new district,” he said. “The buildings needed to be maintained, teachers hired, school supplies purchased, and transportation provided.  One day each week I visited each school and attended to all matter(s) needing attention.”

With the new “super” district a reality, it was time to build. Lankford commissioned a study of the districts’ facility needs. He recalls the response of the citizens confirmed to him his initial thoughts were accurate. “It was the consensus that a new high school would have to be built.  An architecture firm was soon hired and detailed plans were drawn.” 

Financing such a grandiose plan would require passing a bond issue, not an easy task in any farming community. Those who had so vehemently and passionately fought the idea of reorganization would also have a vote. Would it be payback time?  

“To finance the new building, a new bond election would be necessary,” Lankford wrote in his life’s memoir.  “Oh boy - another election within the district where anger and bitterness still existed.   Much work would need to be done if this idea were to pass.  A 2/3 favorable vote was required for passage of. (constructing a new high school). This was going to be really tough.  A Citizen Committee was selected to help explain the need for the new school and how the education program would be greatly improved.  I really believed this time that I might meet my demise as Superintendent in Monroe City.  But I plowed ahead full steam to educate the people throughout this new district as to the importance of this election and what it meant to our boys and girls.  Election Day came and again we received a favorable vote.  Needless to say, a certain Superintendent of Schools was in shock for several days.”

In August 1963, the new high school was ready for occupation.  Lankford proudly recalled, “When school began in September of that year nearly 400 students walked the new halls and seemed as proud of their new high school as I was.”

****

For all of his professional life, Lankford had the reputation as a superintendent who not only supported his school’s athletic teams but demanded that they be successful. He expected the local Panthers to be a source of civic button-busting pride. But he also would give the coaches and athletes what they need to be such. For many area coaches, a job coaching the Panthers was a destination stop, Monroe City the envy of area coaches. 

1971 School Musical

Lankford viewed the won/loss of the locals as a kind of stalking horse evaluation of his district’s health and vitality. He knew that even if a student was not a star, he or she enjoyed being part of a team. Most would never get a college athletic scholarship, but that connecting glue that comes from bonding to a team, even if it's a JV or freshman team, is what made many Monroe City kids want to come to school every day. As a superintendent he subscribed to a theory that school academics and after-school activities are part of the same process, a process known as education. With any addition to the process, his students benefited and that for Lankford was all that mattered. 

“I have always believed it takes a community to educate our children,” he said.  “But not everyone in a community has a child in school.  Yet, everyone needs to be drawn into supporting their local schools.  I recalled that as a youth many towns’ people were very supportive of our school because they supported the various varsity sports programs in the schools.”

In 1959,Lankford convinced the school board to reinstate a football program. It had been over 30 years since the locals had taken to the gridiron and it would be an expensive activity to bring back to life. Lankford explained that football is a festival by nature, a social gathering that touches almost everyone in the school's orbit: band, cheerleaders, dance team, even the FFA popcorn stand and the Lions Club pre-game tailgate. Probably foremost, a matter of timing, Lankford pointed out in his sales pitch to the community that the football season comes at the beginning of the academic year and can set the school tone for the next nine months. The Board of Education enthusiastically bought into his vision of Friday Night Lights. 

“When I arrived in Monroe City the high school had basketball,” Lankford summarized.  “In fact, we had the oldest invitational basketball tournament in the state of Missouri.  Since I had played so many sports in my high school days, it was an easy leap to conclude that more sports would mean more support.  So, with the help and support of the school board, we initiated football and track and field in the Monroe City High School Varsity athletic program.  I still believe this may have done as much to heal the bad feeling still lingering over redistricting as anything I could have done.”

*****

Galen Lankford spent 45 years in Public Education highlighted by his 24-year tenure as Superintendent of Schools in Monroe City.  He was honored with his selection to the Who’s Who in American Education roster.  He was the recipient of the Outstanding Education Award presented by the Missouri Association of School Administrators. Outside of his duties as the head of the local schools, he filled a plethora of civic titles. He served as President of the Monroe City Lions Club and on numerous church and civic committees.  

Trudy Rogstad is today 70 of age and the youngest daughter of Galen Lankford. Now living in Springfield, Missouri, Trudy remembers a childhood long on support and a sense of community. “My dad,” says, Rogstad, “was a man of his word, and that’s why he was so respected within the community of Monroe City.”

Trudy says today she can appreciate the toll the school reorganization challenge took on her dad. “There were many threats made, and the only time in my entire life I can remember my dad to keep a very close eye on where we went. He didn’t like us outside of the house, even just in the in the yard after dark.”

Family

“Dad was very good at being able to bring people together,” Trudy recalls. “That was his strength, and it stayed that way all the way up until the time he died. He just had a way about him of calming any situation. Fairness was absolute with him - he would accept nothing less. He was very conscious of appearances. All the time that he was superintendent, there were two car dealerships in Monroe City. One was a Ford, and one was a Chevrolet. He’d buy a new car about every three years, and he always alternated between a Ford and Chevy.”

Trudy says her father was a great dad. "We knew we could always count on him when help was needed. My mom and dad were fairly strict parents and expected us to behave wisely, study hard, to be involved in school and church activities."

She saw an honorable man. "Our father was the most honest person you could meet. He believed in fairness for all. He was a good negotiator and communicator. He worked hard and long hours. He loved his school with all his heart. We could never go anywhere that he didn't see a past student or family and remembered something about them. He had the highest integrity and was well respected. He impressed almost everyone who knew him or dealt with him."

Bob Howe remembers when the local catholic parish, Holy Rosary, closed its high school in 1966 and sent nearly 100 additional students to a Monroe City High School, already bursting at the seams. “The situation with Holy Rosary went very smooth,” says Howe. "Right away their kids were accepted. I remember the first year two of their seniors started on our basketball team. They’d been starters at Holy Rosary the year before. Once again, I give Mr. Lankford and his ability to listen the credit. And his empathetic nature, for he really did care. And people noticed and appreciated his sincerity.”

From 1926 until 1966, Monroe City passionately supported two high school basketball teams: the Monroe City Panthers and the Holy Rosary Trojans. With a nod to avoidance of a downtown civil war, the two never scheduled each other. Dan Mudd, now 87 years of age is retired and still living in Monroe City with his wife Sue. Both had long tenures with the Monroe City School District. Mudd was also the last coach of the Holy Rosary Trojans. Mudd's seven-year coaching record at Holy Rosary was 123-68. He was also the first paid employee of Holy Rosary who was not a priest or a nun. 

“The Holy Rosary Board of Directors didn’t even have a contract to offer me since there had been none before me, so they went over to Mr. Lankford and borrowed one of Monroe City‘s, then crossed out Monroe City and put in Holy Rosary, I signed it. That’s how intertwined the schools were. Even when we were rivals, we still pulled for each other. Mr., Lankford was a good man and I enjoyed later working for him.”

In the winter of 1966, it was announced on a Thursday afternoon that at the end of the current term, the Holy Rosary High School would be closing. “We really didn't see the closing coming,” said Mudd of the gut-shot blow to the close-knit school and community. “The decision was made on the archdiocese level down in Jefferson City. And the people of Holy Rosary were never really given an opportunity to save the school or a choice in the matter. I remember when we made the announcement to the kids, there were just tears everywhere. Everyone was very upset. I remember one of the nuns said, ‘We will live in a tent if we need to, we'll do whatever we need to do to keep this school open.’ That's the kind of spirit that Holy Rosary High School had.”

Daughters

In the summer of 1966 Mudd was hired by the Monroe City Public Schools and spent the next 31 years coaching junior high sports and serving as the school’s junior high athletic director. In 1966 he served, at Lankford's direction, as a bridge to help MCHS newest 100 members. 

Mudd says Lankford made the Holy Rosary students feel welcome and, more importantly, appreciated. "Monroe City has always been a big sports town and we like to win. So did Mr. Lankford. We had some good athletes at Holy Rosary that were now Panthers and that made Mr. Lankford's teams better and that is all that to him mattered. Some superintendents will tell you when they hire (you) that there is no pressure to win. What they really are saying is we don't care. Mr. Lankford cared. And he expected you to win." 

Mr. Lankford," Mudd continued, "was as fine a man as I have ever known. He had the ability to have even those who disagreed with him still like him as a man. My wife, Sue, and I would go over to the Quincy (IL) mall every Saturday afternoon and there would be Mr. Lankford sitting outside of Burgman's Department Store, holding court.  When Sue (a long-time art teacher) and I retired in 1998, Mr. Lankford sent us a handwritten letter and it was just so heartfelt. Coming from him, it just meant so much to us, touched both of us. Still is one of my most prized possessions." 

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Brown vs Topeka Board of Education, the landmark ruling handed down by the United States Supreme Court in 1954, overturned the 1896 Plessey vs. Ferguson decision that allowed separate but equal racial facilities, known as Jim Crow laws. The facilities were mostly equal in name only. From 1896 until 1954, segregated schools were legal if a state law deemed them so. Missouri was a part of the segregated south and mixed races in public facilities, including schools, was a violation of state law. The Monroe City School District had separate schools for white and black students. Children of color residing within the Monroe City district boundaries in 1953, when Galen Lankford became Superintendent of Schools, attended the Washington School on the south side of town through the 8th grade and then were bussed to Hannibal to attend that town’s colored-only Douglas High School. 

Awards

The Monroe City School District began providing high school level education for its Black students in 1938. As required by the state law of the day, Black and White students were taught in separate buildings. Beginning in 1948, Monroe City Black high school aged students were bussed to Hannibal. The Monroe City School Board paid the Hannibal district tuition. In 1955, the Hannibal Public Schools made the decision to abide by the Brown v Board ruling and completely integrate its schools, thus closing Douglas High. Monroe City now had nowhere that was segregated to send its Black high school students and could not afford to run, in defiance of Brown v Board, a separate high school for its small number of black students only. They had no choice but to integrate the 9th through 12th grades.

Post 1954, many districts in Missouri ignored and/or challenged the Brown v Board ruling in court. Monroe City chose a hybrid path. The high school was integrated, as the law required, but the district’s Black elementary students were still, until 1965, segregated in Washington School. Why? 

In 1956, Monroe City High School graduated its first Black students, four in total. Donald Scott was one. He played on the varsity basketball team. He became the first in his family to graduate from college. He earned his degree in 1960 from Lincoln University and joined the US Army. Thirty-one years later he retired with the rank of Brigadier General. 

And More Awards

The integration of the high school was viewed by most whites in the area at the time as a substantial reform. The high school principal, Bob Howe, says he remembers little about the process and certainly no problems. Mr. Lankford never publicly commented on integration, that can be found in public record, with two exceptions. Found in the official Board of Education meeting minutes from 1955 is a notation that Monroe City High School the following fall would educate Black students. A decade later, in the spring of 1965, Board official minutes note that federal funds would be withheld from the district if they didn't close Washington School and end racially segregated classrooms. The Board of Education followed the administration recommendation to close Washington.  

But to many Monroe City Black citizens, even today, the 1955 move to integrate the high school is seen as merely cosmetic. The dissenters charge that underneath, allowing Washington to stay open for almost a decade, until the Feds threatened to pull funding, is proof that the closing of Washington in 1965 was not done by noble intent but by outside judicial oversight and pressure. 

Alice Jones Smith is a 1975 graduate of Monroe City High School. She attended Washington School through the third grade. In 1965, when Washington School was closed, Smith was assigned for 4th grade to the previously all white Monroe City Elementary School. The School Board had its hand played for them, Smith says, pursuant to its Black high school students when Douglas shut down. "There were not enough high school age students for Monroe to have its own high school, so they had to integrate (the high school) in '56. But with Washington, they made a conscious decision to keep the elementary Black and white kids from sitting in class together. That is not something people in Monroe City like today to hear, but it is true."

A story that still circulates today is that the district in 1955 had given Black families a choice and most wanted to keep Washington open and segregated. Ms. Smith is adamant that this story is patently false and has been told far too long. "That is not true," she says. "Maybe that makes some (whites) feel good today," she theorizes on what she sees as an attempt at historical revisionism. "We were never given a choice. We were told we had to go to Washington," recalls Smith.

Monroe City’s Washington School is a story of eventual triumph, but still the reality is it was a flower grown from poisonous soil—the morally corrupt Jim Crow segregation laws of 20th-century America. "People need to know that it was the law back then," says Howard Pruitt, who runs a Facebook page for Washington School alums. And there is a modern burden to bear, woke culture be damned. "A lot of good people back then didn't question,” Pruitt says.

Pruitt graduated from Monroe City High School in 1971. He was his senior year the captain of the football team. His half-sister, Carolyn Robinson, was that fall’s Homecoming Queen, the second former Washington School alum to be so honored. “I have nothing but good things to say about Mr. Lankford,” he says today, from his home in Columbia, MO. He says that time has given him perspective. “We were young, and we were proud. Mr. Lankford was from a different era; he was old school. But he listened. My sister and I were Jesse Jackson and Angela Davis of Monroe City High School,” he says with a chuckle, referencing two well-known young Black activists of the 1960s. 

“We wanted to have a Black History program in February for Black History month,” Pruitt recalls. Despite its racial diversity, Monroe City has always been a monochromatic community. Today Pruitt admits that in a conservative, predominantly white community in 1969, like Monroe City, his demand was not going to be well received. “Mr. Lankford met with us, and he heard us. We wore black arm bands at school to protest for support. If my memory serves correct, there were several classes that February on Black History. That was, for the time, a concession to us and we took it as a win." 

William Talton was a 1971 classmate of Pruitt's. He was also a key performer on the football field. After graduation he ran track at Northeast Missouri State, known today as Truman State, and earned a bachelor's degree. After a long career as an executive with several Fortune 500 companies, Talton is now retired and living in Atlanta, GA. He remembers the Black History controversy. 

Talton says, "everyone before school would walk the hallways," a sort of pedestrian cruising that has been a long-standing tradition at MCHS. "We all wore our black arm bands walking before school, and it made for quite a commotion. Then after February, it all died down. But we did raise the issue and I recall Howard as being the spokesman with the school. I don't recall if Mr. Lankford was supportive of not. I know that after we left the idea of a Black history class or at least some as part of the curriculum never really caught on."

"I do remember Mr. Lankford as being very supportive of students, white and Black, as individuals. He would, of course, be at all the games but also, I remember he would come into the locker room after a big win and celebrate with us. He just seemed like he cared."

Talton has lingering and somewhat mixed feelings on the Black History demand. "Could (Mr. Lankford) have been more supportive of us and our desire for Black history to be taught in the schools? I don't know. We were kids and had a different perspective. I will say that we were treated well. I think a key that sometimes is forgotten when (assigning) credit for the integration at Monroe City for the most part having went well is yes, athletics were important, but overlooked is that when we came over to the white school, 6th grade was my last year at Washington, we were prepared to compete with the white kids, not only in sports but also in the classroom. We had some great teachers at Washington, and they had us ready. That has over the years not been given the credit it should. The Washington students fit in well because we were well prepared."

****

Galen Lankford’s longtime friend and colleague Bob Howe, today 92 years of age himself, recalls a man both pragmatically greedy and idealistically stubborn, a born brooder, a fanatic about detail. “Mr. Lankford just cared so darn much for his school. He demanded the best, in everything,” Howe says today. Lankford often took the position that if some is good, more is better. Howe remembers how the “cheap as they come” Lankford drove contractors and builders crazy. “When we built the new high school building, it seemed he had to see every brick placed and it better be perfect or do it again. He wanted the fanciest building for the students and the cheapest building for the taxpayers. He wanted it ‘ALL’ for the Monroe City R-1 Schools.” Build me a better mousetrap, he seemed to say, then count on me to supply the cheese. 

Over the years, Monroe City students sensed that their school was special, and their achievements reflected that attitude. Still do today. Credit the self-attention ducking Mr. Lankford. Very small egos can be a sign of very little talent. But in Lankford’s case, it was a sign of a selfless man. 

In a world chocked full of flawed heroes and virtueless villains, it can be difficult to find, let alone label, good guys. But there are a few simple men whose influence and impact carries on beyond their years of walking this earth. Galen Lankford was a salesman, albeit a reluctant one, at best. His style was not to burp enthusiasm in long and frequent bursts, but to model daily his sincere belief in the power of public education. The pride of accomplishment found today in the Monroe City R-1 School District is his legacy. 

Hiawatha Crow

Hiawatha Crow was a well-known and respected African American teacher and political influencer when she passed away in April 1999 at the age of 91, of that there is no doubt. Yet in a sadder but more significant bent, she was just a survivor - her life a quiet but inspiring portrayal of a grassroots racial struggle - a woman of stamina and strong will who simply stayed on her feet while others fell.  

Hiawatha Crow

Her friend and colleague, Dorothy Kemp, said Hiawatha once vowed to her, in a voice equal parts pride and simmering anger, that she would in due time teach white students. The time was coming. At age 58 when she finally stood in front of - and in charge of - an integrated classroom, it should have been an” I got my cake and can eat it, too!” situation, but it wasn’t. Her transition to integrated education was far from seamless. In small towns in 1965 America, skin color still mattered. As all black Missouri citizens did in the Jim Crow era, Hiawatha learned race relations in America looking from the bottom up. 

When she was young and sharp and her classroom delivery was as fluid as any found over across town at the white’s only school, she knew all about the Jim Crow era Caucasian-only clause of the day. It is why she labored for half the salary of what less talented but skin color appropriate for the time teachers made. In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled racially segregated schools to be unconstitutional. But the locals claimed the right to maintain control and she returned to her “colored only” classroom for nearly another decade. Those who knew her best heard her complaints, but she never made a scene. She never shortchanged her students. She valued education over activism.

They say she resisted less when she finally got in the front door of the white school, more of a team player. Or maybe she stayed the same and just bridled her resentment. We will never know, doubtful now, if the subtle layers and often cryptic shrouded roles of her impacting life will ever become clear. She never had children of her own.

Hiawatha Crow was the principal and taught the 7th and 8th grades at Monroe City, MO’s Washington School from 1960-1965, a segregated school for black children. When in the spring of 1965 the small farming community finally closed Washington School, Crow was one of two black teachers absorbed into the newly integrated public district. She retired in 1974.  Later Mrs. Crow became nearby Hannibal, Missouri’s first and still to this day its only black City Council member. In all the varied and sporadic memories that former students, colleagues, and friends recall, they all can agree - she possessed the most delightful personality. The impression she made on three generations of students – white and black – is palatable across the years. Mrs. Crow loved poetry and she brought the classics and Black History to her classroom. With no legacy of their own, she drove the students at Washington school to create one. Many still are.

Hers was a life marked by extreme irony.  Her longtime friend Rhonda Hall says Crow’s life, “didn’t have to be this way, but it was just the way it was.” No single stroke of fate made Hiawatha Crow the trailblazer she was. She years ago, told Kemp it was okay not to worry about shadows or ghosts from the past. Every day was a new day, one day closer to a fairer world. And she also told her to learn patience: “It's going to take time.”

 Dorthy Kemp

In fact, it took a whole constellation of happenings to forge this woman who refused to take no for an answer, or to allow those children in her charge to have their dreams boxed in by their skin color. She was a force who changed lives. Crow was a loud martinet, first a public educator and then an elected politician, a veritable fanatic about fairness and decorum, but she was also a shy, reticent, and private lady when away from her professional duties. "Mrs. Crow was always a stickler for detail, the proper way," says Howard Pruitt, a former Washington School student of Crow’s. "To Mrs. Crow, the right way was the only way."

She is viewed more today, by the few who know of her as less a trendsetter than a forgotten fossil. But in the end, she was out there, overcoming her shy nature, by choice - honest, hardworking, creative - all bound together by her relentless energy. 

******  

She was born with an English teacher’s dream name, Hiawatha - straight from Central Casting; an Indian brave in a Henry W. Longfellow poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.”  For reasons unknown, throughout her life she answered to the pronunciation of "hee-awatha" not the standard hi-awatha.

Hiawatha Moore entered this world on July 19, 1907, in Columbia, Missouri. Her parents were Curtis Leon Moore and Rosie Elizabeth Johnson Moore.  Her father was a sometime Baptist minister. The family moved to the northeast Missouri town of Hannibal when Crow was an infant. Her parents divorced, then both died before Crow reached her teen years. She then went to live with her maternal grandparents. 

Hannibal was the only hometown Crow ever knew. It shaped who she was.

Faye Dant

Rhonda Hall is a well-established and respected historian/genealogist and lifelong resident of Hannibal. Her family has owned and operated the successful Brown and Sons Moving Company since 1909. A community fixture, it is the oldest Black owned business in Northeast Missouri, currently employing a 5th generation of Hall's extended family. "I know what it’s like," says the personable Hall, "to live as a minority in a small town. Over the years, we have established a good relationship in the community. You have to in the business we are in. But that doesn’t mean it was always easy." 

The 65-year-old Hall notes that her birthdate in the late 1950's landed her in the first generation in the black population of Hannibal not to go through a segregated school system. "When I entered school, the schools had just been integrated. I have a brother 20 years older than me that got all his schooling, until his last two years, when he attended Hannibal High School, at the segregated Douglas school. The black kids at the time did not want to switch schools and the whites didn’t want the blacks in their school, either. So, it was a tough time. He and I had totally different experiences, and thus we were given totally different opportunities."

Hall’s delivery is both passionate and demonstrative. She sits during a late summer afternoon in a Hannibal coffee shop discussing the life of Hiawatha Crow. For added emphasis to her thoughts, she taps the table with her right hand while her left punctuates her words with random and erratic stabs. A new acquaintance immediately knows where they stand with the outgoing, well researched and opinionated Hall. She responds multiple times to inquires of the past with a pragmatic summation of, “that is just the way it was.” 

“You should not even mention racial prejudice when you discuss her life,” she says of Mrs. Crow. “It takes away from who she was. She didn’t even recognize racism. To her, she saw no limitations as to what she could do.” 

Hall says that her late friend held a certain self-confidence that would not allow for self-pity. “When her husband passed away (in 1977), she had him buried in what was known as the black cemetery. Just the way it was done in this town. But that cemetery was not kept up as well as the white one, on the other side of town, and oh, that bothered Mrs. Crow (no end.) She had him dug up and reburied in the white cemetery. Cost her a lot of money to do that. But that was how Mrs. Crow looked at things. She didn’t see black and white. She saw one better than the other and she always went for the best, always.”

 Hall's appreciation for the life of Hiawatha Crow knows no bounds. As their relationship bloomed and despite their difference in age, Hall says she would in time defer to Crow – instinctually and without hesitation - as a wise and seasoned public servant. "Mrs. Crow was an activist," Hall states. "She was also my mentor. I trusted her and readily listened to her. I did not know her as a teacher, I knew her as a leading citizen of Hannibal. I have no first-hand information on her teaching experience in Monroe City, I will leave the comments on specifics to those who were there firsthand. But I will say in general that black teachers who entered the (just) integrated schools, did not have it easy. As with almost all professions that suddenly now had blacks in (integrated) positions of leadership and authority, such as teachers or policemen, they had the burden of being twice as good as their white (colleagues) just to show they belonged. That’s just the way it was."

Rhonda Hall

"Mrs. Crow," Hall emphasizes, "was somebody who got things done, in her own unique way. She always stressed that people need to learn to talk, to communicate. She did an (unmeasurable) amount of good for the citizens of this small town, both white and Black. She taught people how to talk to each other. She was a woman of high character and high moral standing. She always, in everything she did put God first and her community second. By the time I knew her, she was a widow, and she never had any children. This town became her family. She was immensely respected and left a solid legacy as a public servant."

"Hannibal was definitely a segregated community during her early life," states Faye Dant, director of The Jim’s Journey Museum. Located in Hannibal, the hometown of author Mark Twain, Dant heads this small but significant historical site with a tidy thought-provoking collection of photographs and newspaper articles. 

If you understand Twain’s Hannibal, you understand the town that shaped Hiawatha Crow. Dant’s museum has a mission statement that declares it is, “dedicated to commemorating the history of people of color in the city made famous by Mark Twain.”

Opened in 2013, the museum is upfront in promoting the important role its Black citizens played in the Hannibal story. Jim was a character invented by Twain. Local legend is that the character’s life is in part based on a real-life slave from Hannibal named Daniel Quarles. Dant emphasizes that Twain’s character Jim is a vital cog to understanding Twain’s writings and has huge historical significance. "It is the first African American character portrayed by a white person as a full-fledged human being, no longer a caricature, but a human, a husband and a father," says Dant. “It is also the story of how from the 19th to the 21st centuries, both African American slaves and free (Black) people lived in Hannibal and the surrounding area. It's also an example of Twain's deep connection with all peoples, lifestyles, and socioeconomic conditions of the day, which have garnered his writings so much international appeal.”

A quirky but horrifyingly tragic sidebar to the story of Quarles, documented in Dant’s museum, is that his son in law was a victim in the infamous Springfield, IL 1908 lynching. Furious that two black rape suspects had been removed from the city jail and snuck out of town to an unannounced safe location, a white mob invaded the city’s black neighborhood, known as the Badlands. In the middle of the night the mob randomly entered the house of 56-year-old barber Scott Burton, drug him out of his home and lynched him; his body mutilated as it hung from a tree.

******

After her parents’ death, Crow was raised by her maternal grandparents, Tom and Eliza Johnson. She noted later in life that her grandparents had unwavering faith in her. They always knew what she could do. They put pressure on her, but they would not allow her to shortchange herself. 

Mrs. Crow graduated from Hannibal’s colored Douglas High School in May 1925. Raised in Hannibal in the 1920’s, Crow would only have been allowed to in school read the 'safe' Black literature of the day. Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example. Or Native Son, by Richard Wright. The more radical element of Black literature of the 1920’s, such as works by Marcus Garvey, would not have been part of the curriculum. The difficult but rewarding reading like the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois was surely off limits, as well.

Uncle Tom's Cabin must have been a haunting story for a young black girl like Hiawatha Crow, trying to fit into a mid-20th century American white society. It addresses racism posited as a daunting and formidable obstacle, all too easy to say, 'the hell with it.' The hero in Uncle Tom's Cabin had to go through life hat in hand, but ultimately, he survived, and succeeded. He was the embodiment of the “good colored.” It was a standard mid-20th century contemporary white society would encourage blacks to emulate.

"If in the south before Brown v Board, you're born black," said the late black newspaper executive Sam Lacy, "you knew when you wake up in the morning that the day ahead can't be any worse than the one before. So, you take a positive attitude from there. All blacks of the time developed a birthmark of optimism."

******

No one on either side of her family had gone to college and for two decades, neither did she. Crow married, twice, having been widowed at the age of 22, remarried at 24 and settled into the life of a domestic, taking over the next 20 years sporadic side and odd jobs. But she always knew college was part of God's plan and she left no doubt she would someday earn her degree. 

After World War II and after several years of substitute teaching in the Hannibal segregated Douglas schools, Crow attended Culver Stockton College in Canton, MO, an integrated institution of higher learning.  But she didn't merely “attend” Culver-Stockton, she went as a now middle-aged women with a passion. She told her friend Dorothy Kemp she would not allow this chance at change to slip away. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the small northeast Missouri school and later a master’s degree from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO, then known as Northeast Missouri Teachers College.

Howard Pruitt

Without the support of the small but fiercely proud Hannibal Black community, Crow told her long time Washington teaching partner, Dorothy Kemp, her uplifting life’s story would've been impossible. Kemp wrote an autobiography, published in 1995, titled “Lingering Impressions.” The prose was clear and direct. There was never any hesitancy as Kemp tackled such issues as church values, education, and racism. Kemp’s book is a valuable resource when attempting to dig through the multiple layers of Crow’s life.

Mrs. Crow and Mrs. Kemp, two dignified professional women, each with a Dustbowl-dry sense of humor, were inseparable. For five years, between 1955 and 1960, they carpooled the 20-mile drive to Washington School from Hannibal each day and together two evenings a week for several years made the three hours round trip to attend graduate level classes at Northeast Missouri Teachers College. Each eventually earned master’s degrees, Crow’s in School Administration. When Kemp was not offered a position with the Monroe City school district after the closing of Washington School, she secured employment with the Hannibal Public Schools. The two remained friends for the rest of their lives.

Howard Pruitt went to school at Washington, completing grades one through six before Monroe City ended school segregation in the fall of 1965 and Pruitt entered the seventh grade, “over at the white school.” Mrs. Crow went along. “She was one of only two teachers from Washington that was retained,” Pruitt recalls. Pruitt grew up in the 1960’s as a typical small-town kid, with an enthusiasm for school, a hearty respect for authority, and a deep interest in athletics. He was the kind of eager young mind Crow loved to mold. Pruitt appreciated and respected her immensely. Still does.

Pruitt remembers, “Mrs. Crow was strong on etiquette - chew your food 26 times before swallowing, setup straight, walk like you have somewhere to be. She was very professional in her approach to any situation. She was a strong disciplinarian. Everyone liked and admired her. Mrs. Crow was a force to be reckoned with,” Pruitt says. “She was a problem solver willing to go toe to toe with the superintendent about the needs of the (Washington) students."

Mrs. Kemp states in “Lingering Impressions” that hot lunches were being served at the white school while Washington School students carried cold lunches from home. Pruitt picks up the story. "Mrs. Crow negotiated with the superintendent until hot lunches were delivered and a cook was hired to serve and clean up. She also got the heating system first repaired and then replaced. I remember those radiators. We all would crowd around trying to get unthawed from that long cold walk to Washington School. Mrs. Kemp and Mrs. Crow drove from Hannibal each day. When researching old Board of Education Meeting minutes, I found a (notation) that both had been docked when they missed school at Washington due to bad weather.”  

“Mrs. Crow taught fifth and sixth grades at the white school, when she first went over, so I never had her as a teacher after we went over to Monroe,” Pruitt recalls. “But I would see her in the hallway, and she would always ask how I was doing.” 

Pruitt has no insight to give as to why Mrs. Crow was one of only two Washington teachers to be retained in 1965 by the Monroe City District. No idea why she was chosen, or the process deployed by the school board of the time that gave a Black teacher control of a classroom full of mostly white students. “Being young, we never thought about that stuff,” reminisces the now 71-year-old Pruitt. “But it would be interesting to know. Mrs. Crow had a way about her that just brought respect. I know when she got over to Monroe school, the students didn’t always show her the respect we did at Washington.” 

In the fall of 1965, Hiawatha Crow finally had her integrated classroom. She was 58 years old - an alert, erect, carefully groomed individual who was austere and dignified – and her white students threw spit balls at her. 

Was it because she was older? Was it because she was saddled as Black teacher at a place in time when most white students and their white parents were not going to support her strict discipline like the parents at Washington did? “I don’t have that answer,” Pruitt admits.

At Washington, the paddle was used often, “and she would get you with it, but you always knew you earned it,” says Pruitt. “She didn’t paddle often; she didn’t need to. I remember once she was teaching, and she saw a student chewing gum. She never missed a word in her lecture to the class, just picked up a tissue from her desk and walked over to the student, held out the tissue and he spit the gum in it. Never said a word. Never interrupted the class but she maintained control. She was always in control of her class and of her demeanor. As I look back today, that is a great example of what a fine teacher she was and how we all respected her.”

Pearl Mayfield Harris did her first four grades of schooling at Washington and then moved over to Monroe City elementary when Washington closed. Mrs. Crow went with her.

“I never had her as a teacher at Washington,” Harris says. “But when I got to seventh and eighth grade, she was our English teacher at the Monroe City Junior High. As I look back if I had to come up with one word to describe Mrs. Crow, it would be poised. At Washington, when I didn’t have her as a teacher, I would see her in the hallways and even as a young girl, I looked up to her for the way she carried herself, for the way she dressed. She always wore heels. She always wore very beautiful hats. She always dressed professionally, and she showed us what pride was. She was always in control. She was a great role model for a young Black girl at a time in my life where I didn’t have many.”

Debbie Swanegan

Harris, the oldest girl in a family of ten, confirms that the respect Crow had earned at Washington did not follow her to the integrated Monroe City school. “She didn’t get the respect like she did at Washington. To be honest, as I look back, I think a lot of it had to do with race. It was just a different time in Monroe City. My first job was when I was 14 years old, and I went to work at the Deluxe Restaurant, washing dishes in the kitchen. My mom was a cook there. It was a very popular eating establishment at the intersection of Highway 24 and 36. The building still stands today. Blacks had to enter through the back door. That was the kind of treatment that Mrs. Crow walked into when she began teaching the white kids. You think white junior high kids are going to respect a Black teacher and accept discipline when the culture they have been raised in says that teacher needs to come in the back door? As I look back now, I have a much deeper understanding of the circumstances and the challenges she faced than I did as a teenager.”

“When I was in eighth grade,” Harris says, “I started to lose my way. I was headed for trouble.” That year at Christmas, Crow made a small gesture that Harris says today was life changing. “I didn’t think at the time that she liked me, and I wouldn’t have blamed her,” Harris says. “But Mrs. Crow gave me a present. I don’t even remember what it was, I just remember that it made me feel so special. She told me that she saw something special in me, and she wanted me to see the same in myself. It really got my attention, touched something in me and I started to try again. That’s a great teacher.”

Bonnie McNeill was a white student of Mrs. Crow’s. McNeill graduated from Monroe City High School in 1975. Crow taught her English in the 7th and 8th grade. She recalls today, “We sure tried her patience. She was a good teacher, but we weren't exactly model citizens. Ashamed of that now! Our class should have been grounded for life for being brats. Several of us got a shoe whack to the bottom but we deserved a lot worse.”

“I remember her English class,” McNeil says. “I guess that would have been the school year of 1970-71. And I didn't dislike her, but it didn't stop me from laughing when others did ornery things. I think now how brave she was to keep coming back day after day to us brats. I remember one day, one of the boys brought plastic dog poop to class and of course we all thought that was hilarious.  She quietly took that poop from him and cut it into tiny pieces right in front of him. Well deserved! He never said a word.”

“When I heard she was participating in Hannibal politics.” McNeill continued, “I was impressed she had the determination to do that. As a teacher of adults during my career, my respect for her grew because she never caved to us. She was fair, and still taught us what we needed to know. I wish I had known her as an adult, it still bothers me I never apologized to her for the way our class acted.”

Pearl Mayfield Harris says that an event from over 50 years ago still haunts her memory. “Mrs. Crow wore some beautiful hats, one to school every day. It was a part of the (elegant) way she carried herself. Once, a group of boys took her hat out of her classroom and flushed it in the toilet. I can still see Mrs. Crow walking through the study hall carrying her soaking wet hat and all the students were laughing. I can still see her walking with her head up and showing no reaction, dignified as always. Thinking of it today makes me very sad.”

 ******

Hiawatha married Lester Gates in June 1930. He passed away in 1932, during the height of the Great Depression. She then married James H. Crow in November 1933. Her second husband was an employee of the Hannibal Cement Co. Mr. Crow was a deacon in their Baptist church. He died in 1977. Hiawatha would live after James’ death another 22 years. She needed to reinvent herself, give her life one final purposeful chapter.

Once again, a widow and now retired from the Monroe City schools, Crow dove into politics. In 1983, Crow ran for the Hannibal City Council. She edged out incumbent Rodger Howell by a 24-vote margin to become the city's third female and first black City Council member. She was re-elected in 1987.  

"I think she absolutely knew how meaningful it was to the black community to have someone who looked like them on the City Council," Faye Dant said. "She probably didn't think she would be the last Black person to be on the City Council. She was doing something that was a brand-new thing. She was one of the most visible women of her time; she knew how to get things done, and I think she really felt like it was up to her to look out for the Black community. She was a proud, self-driven woman, who knew her rights and knew the rights of others."

Faye Dant is a fifth generation Missourian. She returned to her hometown of Hannibal 15 years ago. Her great-great grandparents were brought from Virginia as slaves.

After her graduation from Hannibal high school, Dant’s early adult years path took her first to the Detroit area where she earned a bachelor’s degree from Oakland University, and then to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she acquired a graduate degree in human resources. She and her husband returned 15 years ago and took up residency on a 60-acre family farm south of Hannibal. Her husband was the Athletic Director at Culver Stockton College in nearby Canton, the alma mater of Hiawatha Crow. Today, they live in semi-retirement and lease out their farmland 

“When I was little,” Dant shares, “I remember going to church with Mrs. Crow. That is the only first-hand knowledge I have of her.” Crow died a decade before Dant returned to Hannibal. “But after I returned here and began researching the Hannibal Black community,” Dant states, “I learned much about her as a driving force in the city. She was very well respected. Her behavior and her motives were always above reproach. She was very active in her church, the Eighth Street and Center Missionary Baptist Church. Today it is listed on the National Historical Register, and she was the driving force behind that honor.”

“When she retired from her teaching career over in Monroe City,” Dant continued, “Mrs. Crow got very much into community improvement here in Hannibal. Especially for the Black community. I grew up here, and I can say from experience that was not an easy task she took on. The Black community here has never been a large number, and she defeated a white incumbent council member and then won reelection before she voluntarily retired after two terms. She was only the third women to sit on the council and the first, and still only black member to serve.”

“I distinctly recall when the (Hannibal) schools were finally totally integrated in 1959,” says Dant. “And I was going into the fourth grade, 200 white kids stayed home from school the first week to protest the fact that we (Black students) were there. It was not easy. A lot of those types of prejudice run deep and they’re still here today. They’re not as open but they’re still here. This is not always a comfortable place for Black citizens, especially when you are a definite minority. But Mrs. Crow was a builder of alliances. She knew how to work across the racial lines and in due time she became very respected by both whites and Blacks.”

Deb Swanegan is today retired from teaching art at Hannibal High School. She resides in Columbia, MO. She did not meet Mrs. Crow until 1983, but immediately felt a connection to a woman who became not only a mentor to her, but also to Swanegan’s daughter., LeeAnn.  

“I grew up as an Air Force brat, living all over the world,” Swanegan shares. “So, I was used to moving and when over the years I moved due to my husband’s job, I could handle it. In 1983 I was 42 years old, and I came to Hannibal, and I was hired at the high school as an art teacher.”

Mrs. Swanegan says she was forthright when she hit town. “I made a lot of people uncomfortable because of my race (African American). Hannibal High School had few teachers of color, over the years.” But the new teacher found a soul mate of like life experiences in Crow. “I latched on to Mrs. Crow as a mentor. When she went to teach at an integrated school (in 1965), her role was like what I experienced (18) years later at Hannibal. I leaned on her, and I depended on her. We discussed what she had gone through, and I learned from her patience and grace. She had many fine (traits), but those two she said helped her stay on task, to keep working.”

Swanegan says she came to appreciate the balance that Crow had found in her life. “She was a very determined woman, but she also had a soft spot in her heart, and I think we connected because of that. I learned from her that the Black students in Hannibal in 1983 needed to see a Black face as a teacher just like her students did when she taught at the Washington School, 20 years earlier. But I also learned from her that it was important that my white students also saw that Black people could be successful in positions of leadership, such as a teacher.”

Mrs. Crow would in time also become a mentor to Swanegan’s daughter. “Mrs. Crow helped LeeAnn with academics, but she also became a role model to her. I always felt there was an inference, even if in subtle ways - the Black kids (in Hannibal) were told from an early age that they had limits. They were not encouraged to strive for professional (career paths). But Mrs. Crow never recognized limits. Not due to her race and not because she was a female. Mrs. Crow helped my daughter see that it’s important that you work for the things you want in life, but you also need to know that your hard work will pay off.  Today LeeAnn has both a medical degree and a PhD and is a very well-respected person of intellect. She works for the National Institute of Health. Mrs. Crow helped show her the way.”

In Mrs. Crow’s declining years Swanegan shares that she helped check on Crow’s wellbeing. “She really didn’t have any family. She was an only child, and she had no children. There was a niece from her husband side, but there was little contact that we knew off.”  

Swanegan says that Crow left this world like she walked it for nearly 92 years – with her pride and dignity always intact. “She never lost her desire to help other people and I think that kept her alive. But Mrs. Crow watched all that was important to her slowly die away. As her teaching friends started to pass, and the church congregation got older and older, and (they) did not replace its (deceased) members with new members, she became more and more isolated and, in many ways, it was depressing for her. But she was such a proud woman. And a strong woman. She lived alone in her little house till the day she died. She would’ve never considered going into a nursing home. That’s just the way she was. She was a survivor, and she was a great woman. We can all learn from how she lived her life.”

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So, how should history remember Hiawatha Crow’s life’s work?  Did her willingness to work across lines cross over into appeasement of the racism of the times? “That is always a hard one to answer,” responds the introspective Dant.

Howard Pruitt, who has made keeping the memory of Washington School alive his life calling, says Crow was able to get for Washington School almost anything she wanted from the white town establishment that ran the local public schools, such as a hot lunch program that matched what the kids at the white school received. She did her power broking quietly and behind the scenes. It was her way.

Hiwatha Crow was raised and lived her adult years when skin color was the plague of the country, where racial segregation was the law, and, more or less, the invidious answer to all things social. Resistance was not well tolerated by the white power structure. “Uppity” was a dismissive term used by white society of Blacks who did stay in their lane. “But we dealt with it back then,” Rhonda Hall says. “But sometimes you have to do what you must do to get things done and there is not debate on Mrs. Crow’s ability to get things done.”

Crow, as in Jim Crow, would seem to be an inapt name for a woman who could have lived, if she chose so, in the bitter shadow of the evils of segregation. But Hiwatha Crow wasn't consumed by resentment and for certain was not bitter. Just the opposite. She took the good and left the bad. "If things are handed to you, you get lazy," she told her students. Her family, her life, had prepared her to refuse to be discouraged or frightened. She was at once sweet-tempered and strict, “kindness and flint,” which seems a fair basis on which to appreciate the impacting life of Hiawatha Crow.

“What I will always remember about Mrs. Crow,” says Pruitt, “is that white people liked her, and Black people liked her. I never thought of her in any way but with respect.” Pruitt says she had the ability to rise above some unfair circumstances that could have derailed her and define her. “But Mrs. Crow just would not let hard times or unfair treatment stop her from teaching us. It was very important to her; it was her life’s work.” Pruitt notes that Hiawatha Crow transcended the racism of the day. “Because usually you either line up on one side or the other, white, or black. But she drew on both sides. That was her essence. That was her greatness."