The Negro Leaders in Texas I Have Known Personally the Forty-Five Years I Have Lived in Texas, With Brief References to Their Accomplishments" [Cover title]

Marshall, Texas, 1941. Very good. 11" x 8½". Fourteen leaves of typescript typed recto only and stapled at corner. Pp. 13, approximately 4,000 words. Very good: light wear and a few small stains to edges; lightly toned.

This is the text of a speech made by an African American HBCU president, M.W. Dogan, to a Dallas high school for "History Week." The speech contains historical facts as well as personal recollections of both well- and lesser-known accomplished Black Texans.

Mathew Winfred Dogan was born in Mississippi in 1863. He served on the faculty of Rust University and Central Tennessee College before becoming president of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas in 1896. Wiley College, the oldest HBCU west of the Mississippi River, was founded by the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1873. Dogan was Wiley's seventh president, but only its second Black one, and held his position for 46 years, the longest tenure of any Wiley president. Under his watch, the school's faculty and administration soon turned predominately African American, the campus and programs were expanded and it became one of the top Black universities in the nation. Dogan also served as president of the Standard Mutual Fire Insurance Company, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, and was active in the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Knights of Pythias.

This speech, which Dogan addressed to the "teachers and students" of Lincoln High School (LHS) in Dallas was given for Negro History Week and contains write-ups on African American leaders with whom Dogan had interacted. He mentioned 95 in all, with around two thirds having short profiles of a few sentences, the rest a small blurb such as an office held, or the person's profession. The notable Texans were organized into groups such as ministers, college presidents, teachers and principals, fraternal leaders, physicians and philanthropists. While some of the biographical and historical data can be found readily online, the speech revealed candid personal impressions of important African American leaders such as Tueria Dell Marshall. Marshall was the first principal of LHS (the city's second high school for African Americans), as well as the co-founder of the weekly Black newspaper the Dallas Star Post. Dogan conveyed that Marshall was "noted not only for fine control of his teachers, but possesses one of the keenest minds in public life."

The speech also referred to lesser-known leaders who made a difference in Texas but who may otherwise be lost to history. Dogan related that "Many people do not know that in the 80's several Negroes were members of the legislature of Texas" and listed a few examples. There were also descriptions of musicians including J. Will Jones, a retired mail clerk who was "in charge of music in connection with the Negro schools of Houston." A short section was dedicated to "women leaders of the race whom I have known through the years," including fraternal and religious leaders as well as Jennie Covington, co-founder and first head of the Houston Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

Not located in OCLC which finds only two works listing Dogan as the author. One was an essay entitled "Who's Who in the Negro Race," which we learned was "written expressly" for the book Progress of a Race: The Remarkable Advancement of the American Negro, published in 1925. The other was a history of the Texas Commission on Interracial Cooperation, prepared for the Texas Centennial Celebration in Dallas in 1936.

An invaluable resource with dozens of firsthand impressions of accomplished Black Texans written by an important African American educator.