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3

Act Two

After collecting ballads in 1909, Jackson stayed in Kentucky and worked on getting them published through Berea College. But her world began to change on her marriage to William Franklin French in 1911. Gray eyed and auburn haired, “Frank” French was a dashing, handsome man. He had held the rather glamorous job of mountain mail carrier as a young man, was a graduate of Washington and Lee University and Kentucky Central College, and was a thirty-second-degree Mason. He was in London to do some legal work in 1899, shortly after William Harvey Jackson’s death. It is possible that he worked on executing the terms of Papa Jackson’s will and that he may have seen Katherine Jackson during this time. In fact, the two had known each other since 1893; one photograph shows them on a picnic at Cumberland Falls, and another depicts them in a buggy together, shortly after Jackson’s graduation from Science Hill. It was not until September 11, 1911, that they tied the knot, however.¹

After the wedding, Katherine French was still busy with her ballad collection. In 1914, she did some teaching at the Sue Bennett Memorial School, as she had when she had returned to London in 1899–1900, and she became dean there in 1915 for one year. The story of her recruitment is an unusual one. Apparently, her predecessor, a man named Lewis, was “a holy terror.” He favored physical discipline, sometimes punching children in the face. He punished one child so severely that the father took him out of school and built a separate school building in his own yard so that his son never had to look on Lewis again. Lewis was so detested that, at one point, two young men left a cow in the administration building, the resultant effluvia apparently intended as a comment on his reign. Problems with him got so bad that the town fathers informed Belle Bennett, the school’s head, that, if Lewis did not go, she would lose the school.²

William Franklin French. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.

At this point, Bennett had had enough and asked French to become dean. Dr. French had a young child by then (Katherine, born in 1913) and replied as any new mother might: “Now Miss B. I got a baby to take care of.” Bennett’s curt reply: “A nigger can do that.”³

It may be historical presentism to find such matter-of-fact use of the word nigger to be jarring, but that use provides an ironic window into the dichotomous mind of someone who considered herself a champion of black people. Belle Bennett was involved throughout her life with organizations that benefited African Americans. She started “Bethlehem Houses” (community houses for African Americans), organized a “Colored Chautauqua,” taught Bible school to black children, and urged various women’s organizations to take up responsibility for what she called “this great race of people.” Yet the word fell from her lips as easily as a leaf from a tree. The term was acceptable among whites in the South in reference to black people and was still used freely in speech and print, though white women of Bennett and French’s class may have viewed it as too common to employ in polite company. But it is not just the use of the word. Bennett’s pronouncement that a black woman could tend her baby so that French could do other, more important things highlights the constraints within which African Americans lived then and would live for the next half century, in part because people like Bennett continued to reinforce them unthinkingly. Bennett’s well-meaning but Kiplingesque view of white people’s responsibility toward black people is comfortably housed in an unspoken and assumed superiority of race and class. That view is unmasked by the use of the word nigger, by the assumption that the coarse and demeaning term would be accepted, by the unthinking invocation of a demeaning black societal role, and by the urging of French to capitalize on it. Bennett knew that French would not judge her poorly. And French did not. In fact, she continued to admire her greatly. And she took the job.⁴

In this rather inglorious and ugly way, French became dean of the Sue Bennett School. She served only a year but quickly became enamored of the school and its Methodist-inspired mission. She later wrote a history of the Sue Bennett School and Brevard College in the booklet The Story of the Years in Mountain Work, in which she extolled the virtues of Sue Bennett the woman, her sister Belle (the caretaker of the school), and the role of Divine Providence in the founding and keeping of the school. The Jackson family had such a good continuing relationship with the school, in fact, that the school piano later wound up in the living room of Katherine’s oldest sister, Lou Eberlein.⁵

In 1916, French addressed the Council of Missionary Workers of the Women of the Methodist Church in Georgia. The visit is cited in a newspaper article that also references her ballad work and concludes that she is thus “well-qualified to speak of the life, manners and possibilities of the Appalachian mountain people.”⁶ That same year, William Franklin French unearthed a promising opportunity: to become the head of a new car company called Bour-Davis. This necessitated a move, first to Detroit, then to Shreveport, Louisiana. French, the dutiful wife, hung up the academic robes and went with her husband. In truth, she might have resigned anyway as she had given up on her ballad project with Berea and was pregnant again. She was also older—forty-one, a risky age for a second motherhood at that time. While in Detroit, she miscarried, losing her second child, a son. The miscarriage rendered her incapable of bearing more children.⁷

The move to Shreveport in 1917 marked the start of the most professionally satisfying period of French’s life. The Frenches settled into a house on Jordan Street. They found old music manuscripts in the attic, which they kept; apparently French intended to keep up with her own music making. After a short period for settling in, she engaged in what was to be her longest-lasting project: the formation of the Shreveport Woman’s Department Club.⁸

The Woman’s Department Club of Shreveport

As previously noted, many southern women graduated from northern colleges and after returning home forged new roles for women there. Women’s clubs were a vital avenue for this endeavor in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth. They were ways in which women could gather in a socially acceptable environment, share meaningful and educational experiences, and engage in efforts addressing social issues like slavery, suffrage, and temperance. While women could not yet vote, their visibility and moral influence had an impact on men’s decisions. Thus, they walked the tightrope between acceptable female roles and social activism.

White women had been banding together for various causes since the American Revolution, when thirty-seven upper-class women, led by Esther Deberdt Reed, formed the Philadelphia Ladies’ Association to raise money for the revolutionary army. Their subscription efforts included seeking donations from not only from wealthy women but also from middle- and lower-class women, intentionally bridging the class divide by including women below their class standing in their fundraising efforts. Their door-to-door solicitations were tolerated because they were acting in support of their husbands’ endeavors. In fact, they raised over $300,000 (in Continental currency) from fourteen hundred donors.⁹

The women’s club movement proper began in about 1830 in the North. Free black women were among the first to organize, concerning themselves with “mutual aid and self-organization.” White female societies and relief societies also formed during those years to address problems the government did not seem inclined to address, including issues concerning widows, orphans (including black orphans), and the mentally ill. Women were permitted to take part in such efforts because the matters they were working with were seen as ones of nurture, extensions of the life of the home.¹⁰

During the Civil War, women organized on both sides to help with nursing and rehabilitation of the injured. These efforts were not just accepted but welcomed, and the temporary autonomy that they provided women was tolerated. It is after the war that some of the efforts of organized women became controversial. For one thing, the infantilization of women, particularly in the South, gave white men an excuse to engage in acts of horrific violence against black men in retaliation for supposed acts of sexual depravity against innocent and helpless white women. For another, in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, women’s organizations began to engage with social issues. Women’s clubs were not seen as threatening until they began questioning matters like slavery and suffrage. As long as they built schools, medical dispensaries, and shelters for the homeless, they were considered to be operating within acceptable limits. Even temperance was seen as an acceptable issue, for it was framed in terms of the home, that is, the suffering caused by alcoholic husbands. However, as Anne Firor Scott points out, once these clubs supported prison reform, sex education, minimum wage laws, and suffrage, opprobrium came down on their heads, and they were accused of trying to revolutionize the social system, subverting the relations of women and men, and threatening the sacred institution of marriage.¹¹

Women’s clubs in the South had a later start but followed roughly the same trajectory as their northern counterparts. Barbara Smith Corrales notes that it took at least a generation for them to catch on in the South: “The role of women’s organizations was initially less significant in patriarchal southern communities that severely restricted public expression by women, but, over time, southern women’s clubs effectively loosened social restraints, permitting a broader application of the feminine gender’s ‘natural traits’ (nursing, nurturing, and moral guidance). Women utilized this new freedom to promote reforms, eventually including woman suffrage.”¹²

However, not all women’s clubs, North or South, promoted progressive policies and goals. In the South, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894, used Lost Cause mythology and sentiment to promote a kinder, gentler story about the antebellum South. Chapters erected statues, established Confederate veterans’ homes, and, most importantly, in the early twentieth century used pressure from their twenty thousand members to urge textbook companies to put a pro-Confederate spin on “the War between the States.” This pleasant fiction promoted an emphasis on the states’ rights angle and painted a picture of kindly, elegant, dashing masters who loved their slaves and treated them well. It was an image that was to persist throughout the South for at least half a century and echoes still.¹³

Few women had a wider and longer-lasting impact on the organization and operation of any women’s club than Katherine Jackson French. Her work with the Shreveport Woman’s Department Club endures to this day; the club is still in existence and sponsors lectures, concerts, and gatherings.

Founded in 1919, the Shreveport Woman’s Department Club was an organization that initially focused, for the most part, not on politics, but on educating the city’s female residents. French and the other founders envisioned the club as a place where women could go to learn, to study, and to better themselves. This meant providing what was essentially a college-level curriculum in a variety of subjects for only the price of membership dues, or a “nominal sum.”¹⁴

The Woman’s Department Club grew out of the oldest literary club in Shreveport, the Hypatia Club. The offshoot group called a special meeting in November 1919, presided over by J. D. Wilkinson, the president of Hypatia. Plans were made for a women’s group “whose aim and objective would be to provide a center of thought and action, thereby focusing the strength and artistic growth of Shreveport and vicinity.”¹⁵ Dr. S. B. Hicks was elected president. Katherine Jackson French doubled as vice president and “Permanent Chairman of the Board.” The group resolved to seek a permanent location and establish a free reading room and library, with the goal of being open all day. Lectures, art exhibits, and music classes were to be offered. After the resolution establishing the club was passed, French and two other women rose to speak of other women’s department clubs they had been involved with or knew about. A committee adjourned briefly and came back with working bylaws. Once the bylaws were approved, eighty-eight women joined the newly formed club on the spot. French then rose to announce that she would deliver the first lecture, on behalf of the literary department one month hence, that it and all her lectures would be free of charge and open to the public, that the class would progress as fast as it wished, and that anyone could attend her lectures without preparation so that women who were too busy to do homework (and perhaps those who could not read well) could be accommodated.¹⁶

That first lecture by French, “The History of Drama,” was held a month later, in January 1920. The 125 women in attendance were too many to fit into Mrs. Cecilia Ellerbe’s living room, so the group chose the Council Chamber at City Hall as its regular meeting place. Meetings continued to be held there for five years. During that time, the group carefully raised money through bazaars, teas, and donations and hired an architect to build a permanent home.¹⁷

It is not clear whether the membership of the Woman’s Department Club of Shreveport consisted of only the city’s upper crust, but certainly its founders and administrators were from that circle, which accounts for its fund-raising success. The membership fee was $15.00 per year, which had the purchasing power of about $220 in today’s terms.¹⁸ Nonmembers paid “a nominal sum” to attend events, a fairly egalitarian practice that seemed to invite not only the wealthy but also the middle class to attend. It is extremely likely that the club was white only; I have found no pictures or any other evidence to contradict that conclusion, which is a logical one given the mores of the place and time. By the late nineteenth century, women’s clubs nationwide were made up mostly of upper-class white women who were not burdened with the menial tasks of homemaking.¹⁹ When she cofounded the club, French fit that mold; she had a servant at home, no career as of yet, and little to occupy her other than her activities at the Methodist church. Her name and the names of the other founders frequently appeared in local newspapers as hosting teas and dinners. She was included in the top tier of Shreveport society, though she and her husband were, apparently, never really wealthy. Her pedigree and education probably account for a good deal of that, her faithful activities with the Methodist church for more, and her well-developed social skills for the rest. As women’s clubs tiptoed societal lines of gender, French bridged lines of class with apparent ease.

One cannot read the notes from the early meetings without noticing the steady presence and guiding hand of French. When a chair quits, which happened four times in the first year, she moved that a committee be formed to find a replacement. She recruited the first guest speaker for the club, Judge Ben Lindsay. She gave instructions on how to behave during the Metropolitan Opera star Geraldine Farrar’s recital (“absolute silence”). It was her suggestion to get a lawyer to apply for a state charter, and she made many suggestions to amend the group’s bylaws. Every time the group encountered a problem, whenever something needed to be done or addressed, French was there to do it. She emerges from this mass of club minutiae as a capable, dedicated, insightful, practical, knowledgeable, and tireless woman.²⁰

The gorgeous Georgian mansion that became the permanent home of the Woman’s Department Club was finished in 1925. The first lecture given in the new hall was French’s closing lecture of the 1924–1925 season. As seats had not yet been installed, audience members perched themselves on boxes that the construction workers had left behind. This worked out well, as the discomfort prompted each member to pledge “the price of one opera chair” for the new auditorium.²¹

Woman’s Department Club, Shreveport, interior. Photograph by Elizabeth DiSavino.

French stayed on as board chair until 1928 and continued teaching English literature every Friday for free long after that. She taught in her regalia, linking her students’ fledgling efforts with her own impressive academic achievements, and focused on her area of expertise: English and classical literature. Her lesson plans were detailed. She did not talk down to her students but expected them to keep up. A typical year of lectures covered the miracle plays, the morality plays, the early comedies, the early tragedies, Elizabethan drama, and Jacobean drama.²² But French’s goals were not only to educate the minds of the women of Shreveport but also to enlighten their spirits:

This course of lectures is presented this year, not so much to increase your knowledge in the abstract sense and develop dramatists, as to heighten your desire for more learning, until it becomes a yearning, an obsession for deeper truths, more lasting beauty, and more eternal good … to promote a great spiritual bond for all humanity…. This larger outlook that comes from books and work, brings with it a freedom, an emancipation from what is small and petty, with a contempt for wealth as wealth, and a contempt for power as power, and a contempt for society as society, and gives one instead interests and influences which should soften the hard places and make life brighter for many in reach…. Men may grow mighty of heart and mighty of mind, magnanimous, which is to be great in life, to have made progress in living. It is not to have more trappings, more public honours, more fortune, more footmen. He only is advancing in life whose heart is softer, whose blood is warmer, whose brain is quicker, whose soul is more personal, whose spirit is entering into living peace. This sheds an inward light and can vouchsafe an inward lustre that shall survive the undaunted quest, until the mind becomes a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which its possessor lives. This looking for beauty, with an open mind and open heart, will bring a greatness of thought, and consciously and unconsciously crowd back the evil, the unrest, the bitter, the hate, and show infinite values and final accumulation of all good. Let us determine to study more constantly every aspect of real knowledge, fill our minds only with things of permanent value, hoping some day to grasp deeper knowledge, to realize more exquisite beauty, more genuine good, and after all is said, that is Truth and that is Eternal.²³

By 1920, the club had taken stands on several social issues, including a minimum wage for women, an eight-hour day for female industrial workers, and the stance that “part of a prisoner’s wages should be paid to his family.” These were relatively progressive positions for a southern women’s club to take. The fact that French held great influence in the Woman’s Department Club may hint at her own views on these issues.²⁴

French took a few absences from the club during the time she was involved with it. She went home to Kentucky in 1920 to be with her mother during her final illness. Letters attest to the fact that her students appreciated her and fervently wished for her return.²⁵ She did so after her mother’s death and recommenced her lectures. She took or considered taking other breaks from the club and apparently even considered leaving; each absence or any threat thereof was greeted with impassioned letters from her students imploring her to stay. “You have enriched my life beyond my power to ever express,” wrote one student. Another pleaded: “Surely you will not go? What will we do without you? What will the Department Club do without you? We all know that your unselfish work, your gifts of mind and heart have made the club. You have endeared yourself to this entire community, by the charm of personality, your many gifts of rare quality—your Christian virtues and graces—and the thought of having to give you up, brings sorrow to all of us.”²⁶ One student even wrote an ode to her that began:

When French dons her Doctor’s hood and gown

We see the earnest woman’s eyes betray

A fond expectancy. She holds a sway

More sure than any queen with blazing crown.²⁷

Two things are evident from these writings: that French’s students adored her and that she was a powerfully gifted teacher who succeeded in awakening in her students a yearning to connect with knowledge and enlightenment.

It was typical for French to receive gifts at the end of every lecture season. Her diary notes the grateful receipt of flowers, china, drawings, paintings, and silverware. Her lectures were always well attended; she noted that three hundred women attended a lecture in 1920, an observation supported by a statement in the Shreveport Times the same year: “Dr. French and Mrs. Ellerbe are planning the lectures again in the Council chamber, but I don’t know, those who came late last year stood up, and this year everybody is coming back—and then some.” Largely by dint of French’s charisma, women joined the Woman’s Department Club in droves. By 1941, it claimed a membership of one thousand. Membership may have been as high as sixteen hundred during World War II.²⁸

Such adulation must have been hard to walk away from, and, indeed, French did not. She continued her work as a lecturer with the Woman’s Department Club for a total of eighteen years, and she served in other capacities as well: life member, vice president, chairman of literature, member of the board of directors. The twenty-fifth anniversary yearbook applauds her “joy and passion of the natural teacher” and states: “Her interest and cooperation have been felt throughout the club. A bronze plaque on the rear wall of the auditorium attests to the esteem in which Dr. French is held by this group of 1000 women.” It was presented to French at the close of her lecture series in 1936 and remains hanging today.²⁹

Katherine Jackson French at the Woman’s Department Club of Shreveport. Courtesy of Katherine Tolbert Buckland.

The Professor: Centenary College and the AAUW

French’s light found other ways to shine. In 1924, a great opportunity came her way: the position of professor of English at Centenary College in Shreveport.

French began working at Centenary College in September 1924. She was to stay there for twenty-five years. Strangely, her diary contains no details about her hiring, noting only the date she began. The hiring process remains a mystery. It is possible that members of the college attended her lectures, realized what an outstanding teacher she was, and initiated the process that led to her hiring. It is also possible that her social skills and activities had something to do with it. She entertained and called on people frequently. Her “guest” list takes up five columns in her diary for 1919–1920, her “call” list two. Finally, she was active in the First Methodist Church in Shreveport, taught Sunday school, and belonged to the Ladies Missionary Society and the Junior League. The Shreveport First Methodist Church had deep ties to Centenary and had helped bring the college there from Jackson thirteen years earlier. Those ties probably worked to French’s advantage. Her prodigious social skills would have allowed her to network and to lay the foundation for her employment at Centenary.³⁰

Centenary College. Photograph by Elizabeth DiSavino.

When she first arrived at the lush and verdant Centenary campus, only five of the twenty faculty members were women (including two of the music teachers, one of whom was married to the director of music, and another professor who carried the title “Director of Expression”). There were only three professors who held doctorates, and only one of those—French—was a woman. Once again, French found herself in the position of breaking barriers. She proved to be outspoken, especially for a new hire, and lost no time advocating for the cause of educating the underserved. At a 1924 luncheon with fellow Centenary employees, the newly minted professor gave an impassioned speech about how Centenary should not be “a rich man’s college” and should help “not the few, elect, who have always gone” but also the less fortunate get an education.³¹

French’s teaching left a deep impression on her students and colleagues alike. One of her students, Charles Brown, remembers her as “a great teacher”: “She lived Shakespeare. She pantomimed Shakespeare. In one play, she pantomimed a snake all the way across the length of the classroom. I don’t know if she killed him, but she stomped on him! She did that a lot.” Brown recalls that she loved English literature and tried to get him to memorize Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but he was “a World War II vet who was not too hot to trot for school anyway,” so “she was not real successful.” Brown also recalls her as “tall for a lady, then, probably five-seven, five-eight.” She enunciated clearly, he notes, and did not have an overly loud voice, but everyone could hear her “over all the class.” Hers was “not a soft little ladylike voice” but more like “a ‘years-of-getting-students-to-listen’ type voice.” “Everybody liked her,” he continued. “Definitely not overbearing. She did not try to make you do anything; she tried to get you to do things.” Occasionally, French would sing, though Brown could not recall what. “I guess you could say she had what you would not classify as a singer’s voice,” he recalls wryly.³²

A colleague, Dr. Betty Speairs, remembers French toward the end of her career. Speairs arrived at Centenary to teach at the age of twenty-two. She recalls going to a faculty picnic her first year, and that to her surprise, a gray-haired French jumped up and read Shakespeare to all in attendance: “She did an excellent dramatic job. Very entertaining! I was impressed by this entertainment at a faculty picnic.” Speairs recalls the faculty being “very respectful of French.” She also somewhat ruefully recalls French talking her into running for president of the Louisiana chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She won. “I shouldn’t have [run], but she was very persuasive,” recounts Speairs.³³

French was still talked about even after her career was over. Dr. Lee Morgan, who taught at Centenary after French’s retirement but heard lingering memories of her, recalls a story about her devoutness coming into conflict with her teaching duties. “She would read a great deal to her classes,” he recalls. “She would read up to a word like ‘maidenhead,’ read right up to it and simply omit it … a real old-fashioned prudish person—an oddity in her personality. I do remember she was well-respected as a teacher.”³⁴

French served on committees, often more than one a year. She rarely missed a faculty meeting. Among the motions she made were one for the college to join the AAUW (in 1941) and another to elect two women to membership on the board of trustees (in 1942). Both motions carried unanimously, which again speaks to her communication and social skills. In another instance, French suggested that the faculty work on plans to “get the students more actively engaged in chosen churches.” The dual issues of religion and women remained constants throughout her time in Shreveport.³⁵

The Frenches were very much at home in Shreveport. Katherine taught during the week; Frank pursued a variety of business opportunities, including drilling oil wells and government appointments. Sundays were spent at church, usually followed by a fried chicken lunch and then visiting neighbors. “I don’t know of anyone that didn’t love her,” says Kay Tolbert Buckland. “I can remember at Christmastime my father would take me and we would go and deliver presents … there in Shreveport because [all the recipients] were all good friends of my grandmother. And my grandmother didn’t have any money. She was a schoolteacher! But they all wanted to be her friend.” French was a “friend of the wealthiest people and the poorest people”: “They all loved her.”³⁶

As noted, French often played hostess to a wide range of people in her home. A favorite tradition was the Christmas morning eggnog party. French made a brew, imported from her native Kentucky, called “Henry Clay eggnog.” The recipe involved two dozen eggs, a lot of milk, and a lot of cream plus a quart of bourbon and a quart of rum. Her teetotalist guests “would come to her eggnog party, not knowing all the booze that was in the eggnog”: “They … never said a thing about it.” These guests apparently remained blissfully ignorant of the alcohol-induced cause of their early morning Christmas cheer.³⁷

French kept in contact with Science Hill Academy, the school that had opened so many doors for her. Her high regard for Science Hill was genuine, evidenced by the fact that she sent her own daughter there. In 1925, the school held a centennial celebration. French was chosen from among hundreds of graduates to represent students from the Wiley Poynter years. Her speech honored him, reflected her ongoing passion for opening up educational possibilities for women, and also paid homage to Poynter’s wife and successor, Clara. “Tonight,” she declared, “I come to place two wreaths upon two brows, upon the one a crown of service for seventeen years of marvelous beginnings; upon the other a crown for thirty-nine years of exampled carrying-on.”³⁸

French attained local recognition in the Shreveport community on a number of counts, many of which she appears to have engineered herself. She was mentioned frequently in the Shreveport Times for her work with the Woman’s Department Club. The paper pointedly uses her proper title in a 1920 article: “And by the way, for our everyday saying, she is our friend, Mrs. French, but whenever she is doing any work along the lines for which she received her degree, she has been asked to use the title bestowed upon her and be called Dr. Katherine Jackson French.”³⁹ (Whoever “asked” her is not stated.) In 1930, the paper began to publish her weekly lectures. That same year, she is quoted in an article, “What Music Means to Me.”⁴⁰ In 1933, she is the subject of a lengthy feature article: “The proud boast of Centenary college that its English department is unexcelled by any college in the entire South is supported among other reasons by the fact that it has been fortunate enough for 10 years to have identified with it one of the foremost English scholars in the entire country, Dr. Katherine Jackson French.” The article refers to her work in the British Museum and mentions hobnobbing with education leaders at the Columbia University Library during summers off. It also makes a point of noting that French had met distinguished speakers and performers through the Woman’s Department Club and that with many “she has had delightful associations.”⁴¹ This collection of famous acquaintances is corroborated by her granddaughter, who remembers going to a Broadway play when she was a child and being introduced to Richard Rodgers, a friend of her grandmother’s.⁴²

Not surprisingly, French became active in the early organizational efforts of both the Shreveport and the state chapters of the AAUW. In March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor, she was elected president of the Louisiana chapter. Immediately following her election, she and her secretary-treasurer, Mrs. C. L. Mooney (also of Shreveport), traveled to Alexandria for the tenth state convention. The focus of the convention was “the place of women in the defense program.” French also traveled to the national convention in Cincinnati in May, that year’s theme being summed up in the statement: “The American Cause is again the cause of the creative human spirit, which no enemy has ever overcome.”⁴³

At the national convention French heard Erika Mann, the daughter of German ex-patriot novelist Thomas Mann, speak of the dangers of Hitler’s youth education programs as outlined in her book School for Barbarians (1938). She took copious notes on Mann’s speech, the main points of which lamented the “blind obedience” of the Hitler youth and outlined Mann’s solution: the “battering rams” of group action and the inculcation of the democratic process in schools. Mrs. Edward R. Murrow also spoke (albeit from London), as did Ambassador Mary Craig McGeachy, the first woman ever to receive a British embassy appointment. Dr. Margaret Mead, who had not yet become a cultural icon, also delivered an address titled “What Women Might Contribute to Science.” (She also spoke to the state chapter in 1947.) French’s circle of acquaintances and influences thus grew to include some of the most prominent female thinkers of the time.⁴⁴

French’s election as president of the Louisiana chapter of the AAUW came at a time of great world turmoil. Europe was being overrun by Nazi Germany, England had been attacked, and the United States was torn over whether to enter the war. In October 1941, French wrote to her AAUW colleagues: “Another year lies before us, filled with terrific problems to be solved. We must not merely be another club, but must recognize the challenge to think, face our obligation to society, and encourage our members steadfastly in the search after Truth, which will bring to us the courage and rebuild or uphold our morale. ‘We have within ourselves the power to conquer bestiality, not with our muscles and our swords, but with the power of the light which is always in our minds.’ (There Shall Be No Night).”⁴⁵

In 1942, French invited Ambassador McGeachy to speak at the AAUW Louisiana state convention in Hammond, where she spoke on the subject “British University Women in War.” An article in the Shreveport Times attests that McGeachy stated that British women were happy to be involved in the war effort and were part of an overall feeling of national unity. It quotes her as proclaiming: “Plato stated three things that save us … justice, self-demand, and truth, and I would add a fourth, love.”⁴⁶ A photograph in an unidentified newspaper article shows McGeachy with French and the vice president of the Alabama AAUW.⁴⁷ French stands in the middle, as though bringing the two together. The visit was facilitated by Lord Halifax, to whom French wrote afterward: “[McGeachy] brought to us a message that is rarely heard…. You are making a great contribution to our civilian defense when you furnish such a marvelous speaker.”⁴⁸ Other topics at the 1942 conference included the importance of the arts for preserving morale and culture and educating for times of peace.⁴⁹

Dr. Ellen Agnes Harris, Dr. Katherine Jackson French, British ambassador Mary Craig McGeachy. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.

Perhaps partially spurred on by the enlistment of her son-in-law, Carl, French yearned for the AAUW to take a more active role in issues related to the war. She had been warned of the difficulties of this by her predecessor, Lucy Lamb. Lamb’s view proved to be correct. After Pearl Harbor, the war was in full swing, and everything else was put on hold. The national AAUW meeting in Dallas in 1942 “fell through,” as did an attempt at a biennial in Kansas City. Still, French soldiered on. On behalf of the AAUW, she was appointed to the Louisiana Salvage for Victory Council in 1942. By 1943, she had visited every local AAUW chapter and in April 1942 reported to the state membership: “All [are] … flourishing, all busily engaged in civic defense work, social welfare, and educational projects in their communities. Many are furnishing teachers and leaders of all sorts, who are upbuilding and upholding the morale, conscious of having received especial gifts from life, and burdened with the responsibility of making honorable returns.”⁵⁰

French again wrote to the Louisiana membership in March 1943, advocating for a meeting of the leadership, and urgently asking each chapter to pay for its leaders to attend. “We have an unfinished task in the world,” she proclaimed, “and as we now perform those assigned us, will we be able to share in the global policy of the post-war world, when questions of tremendous magnitude await us? A world society in security forever!” Writing in her last days as president, she took the bully pulpit in her closing: “Natchitoches, March 26–27: Please meet me.”⁵¹ Her letter with its tone of urgency succeeded. The AAUW did meet in Natchitoches. Topics addressed included “Our Part toward Tomorrow,” “In International Relations, Survival of the Fittest,” and “University Woman’s Objections.” While efforts toward concrete actions regarding the war effort do not seem to have coalesced as a result of this convention, the very act of meeting kept the organization active.⁵²

French spoke at numerous local AAUW branches during her tenure. She served until 1943, when she was succeeded by C. C. Colvert.⁵³ The transition was facilitated by a past president, Sarah Clapp, who wrote to her: “In the helter-skelter of Saturday, you disappeared without my saying to you how great is my satisfaction in your administration from the first day to the last, how high a mark you have set for future presidents to aim at, and what a pleasure it is to work with you in any capacity whatever.”⁵⁴ This view was seconded by Dr. Agnes Ellen Harris, who wrote: “You have been such an ideal and wonderful President.”⁵⁵

French was awarded an AAUW International Fellowship Grant for 1951–1952. She continued to attend state and national conventions. As was her custom, in her 1949–1950 conference program book she took notes on a lecture (likely that of Helen Dwight Reid) that particularly resonated with her: “1. Think for ourselves on every question. 2. Hold fast the spiritual, moral, and democratic ideals and values of our forefathers—the founders of America. 3. Must not hate men, but must hate wrong … hate war and end war for all time. 4. We must be stabilized and retain our ideals of peace and culture. 5. Get ready for tomorrow.”⁵⁶

The work of the AAUW at that time paved the way for the acceptance of women in academe and indeed, shone a spotlight on women’s issues in general. French recognized the importance of this and lent her time and prodigious energy to that work. Her years with the AAUW as both member and as leader meant much to her. Her AAUW pin remained in her possession to the end of her days.

French was active in a number of other activities. She was a member in the Colonial Dames of America, she taught Sunday school at the First Methodist Church in Shreveport and at the London Methodist Church in the summer, and she was a member of the Shakespearean Society of America, Phi Theta Kappa and Chi Omega, the Modern Language Association, and the National Society of the Daughters of the Byrons of Runney.⁵⁷ Put all this together, and we have a picture of a committed, active woman. This is even more extraordinary in light of the health issues that French faced. She took numerous absences from the Woman’s Department Club in the late 1920s, including one attributed to “continued illness.”⁵⁸ We have an indication of what may have been wrong in an early letter from her sister Annie: “It is hard to get away with … that flu after having it. Hope your heart holds out better than before.”⁵⁹ This is the first clue of the heart condition that later took French’s life. She took a year off from the Woman’s Department Club in 1929–1930 but apparently returned undaunted and resumed her lectures and busy schedule.⁶⁰

Mother Katherine

French’s daughter Katherine attended Centenary College during her mother’s tenure there, graduating in 1935.⁶¹ This must have been a complicated situation as French proved to be a concerned and somewhat overprotective parent. Young Katherine spent part of her first year at Mount Holyoke, apparently on some kind of transfer program, as she is also listed in the 1931 Centenary College yearbook. Correspondence from that time has French issuing orders to her daughter on virtually every issue from wardrobe to travel plans to study efforts. When Katherine struggled at Holyoke with both health issues and study skills, her mother attempted to help by sending material for her projects, including information for a paper on ballads:

I have gathered up material for your Shakespeare and your ballad paper. Now Angel, this ballad material is absolutely new. Your teacher likely does not know half as much as I do. Not boasting, but I spent years at work on it. The only new book worth reading is Davidson’s [sic] Traditional Ballads of Virginia⁶² and I have gleaned the best of it. The article I send is one I prepared for the press and has never been published. You can use some of that as you had gone with me saying you as a child had accompanied your mother on your researches. Such a character as Aliza Bullard or Mrs. Watkins or your Aunt Nanny Bob’s mother are the ones to use. Do you recall our trip to Columbus and can you remember Mrs. Branson. If you can remember her and her singing…. You do not need to do any library work as it is all here. You may have to omit a lot of the personal incidents as they may be too personal. Mrs. Foster knows I lecture on this and asked me to address her classes the last time I was there.

This is a very uncomfortable missive. French tells her daughter to use her material and claim she remembered things she clearly did not and instructs her as to how to pass off her work as her own. This overprotectiveness is tempered by another sentiment: “I hope deeply that this critical theme works the charm and gets you a good grade. I wish to help you in any honest way, but not for anything would I make it too easy for that would do you no good.”⁶³

Overestimating her daughter’s modest academic efforts and abilities, French fruitlessly tried to get Katherine placed at Oxford. Either projecting her own wishes or hoping to provide inspiration, she wrote: “Every thing has its price, and the intellectual life demands a heavy one. However, you and I will sacrifice everything trivial for its possession.”⁶⁴ Daughter Katherine was not a stellar undergraduate student, but it should be added that she went on to earn a master’s in art from Columbia University in summer sessions between 1937 and 1941. French wrote to her daughter during her summers in New York, confessing to nostalgia for her own days there: “I well recall my similar experiences. After New York, one gets lonely anywhere. But shall we omit going to the big city for that reason? I get so lonely for it, and for you, and for life some days.”⁶⁵

French also explored the possibility of obtaining a position as president of Mount Holyoke, probably to be nearer her daughter. Here she hit a brick wall as the then president of the college, the iconic Mary Woolley, had no intention of resigning.

Like the rest of the nation, during the 1930s the Frenches were going through financial difficulties. Frank never struck it rich in oil, hoped-for appointments from the governor either did not pan out or did not pay much, and French often worked for long periods at Centenary without pay because of the toll the Depression took on the college’s financial situation.⁶⁶ “This was the Depression,” said Kay Tolbert Buckland. “She taught for nothing at the college. She got very little. Nobody had any money to pay anything…. They worked for nothing…. Mom said they ate pancakes morning noon and night. They had friends jumping out of windows. A lot of their friends were these very wealthy people and they’re the ones who got hurt the worst.”⁶⁷

Prior to and during the Depression years, Frank traveled a lot for work, trying to strike it rich in oil. A frequent word in French’s 1929 diary is lonely. There are several times she mentions spending nights alone because he was working. She also noted that he came to his mother-in-law’s funeral in 1920 ninety minutes late. Whether or not these entries indicate trouble within the marriage, they do indicate at least routine periods of separation as Frank and Katherine pursued their own careers.⁶⁸

Briar Lodge: Old Kentucky Home

Despite deep financial problems, French managed to travel. In 1938, she sailed for England aboard the steamer Bienville, a trip made with her sisters and friends. She also made a point of staying in touch with her Kentucky roots. She was often a guest of honor at events in London. In 1933, she gave a speech near her childhood home at the dedication of a new state park, known today as Levi Jackson State Park. She attended the first Laurel County Homecoming in London in 1935, gave a speech about mountain ballad origins, and introduced Millie Phelps, who sang “Barbara Allen.” She continued to travel to London for summer homecomings and wrote “A History of London” for the town’s Founder’s Day celebration on August 17, 1940. At this celebration, her great-grandparents, the London founders John and Mary Hancock Jackson, were reinterred at the new Dyche Cemetery. Six thousand people attended the event.⁶⁹

The Jackson Cabin in London, Kentucky. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.

Summer visits to London became yearly events. Though her sister Annie was still living there, the Frenches stayed in a cabin in the hills of South London built on land that belonged to her oldest sister, Lou, in the mid-1930s. (The deed was transferred to Katherine and Frank in 1949.) The cabin was off in the woods on an eight-acre parcel of land that backed on a pig farm. It had no heat, running water, or electricity. Water came from a well, and the outhouse was down the path. There was a wood stove and a true icebox in the kitchen.⁷⁰

A Shreveport Times article featuring French describes the cabin, citing its name as “Briar Lodge”: “[It is] in the foothills of KY on the Daniel Boone Trail … [a] quaint old-fashioned cabin built on land deeded her family in 1789 when KY was part of VA…. [It] is filled with antiques of the farm-type, such as wheels for wool and flax, rifles, powder horns, bullet forms, candle molds, cooking utensils for open fires, and much interesting furniture.”⁷¹

Kay Tolbert Buckland has vivid memories of summers spent with Grandmother Katherine:

She loved to play cards at night, ’cause we could light the lanterns. We would pop popcorn in the basket … over the fire…. At the big fireplace at the end of the room, … she would sit in this little school desk, and she could write at it, and she could play cards on it. I remember eating her raspberries, blueberries, she would make wonderful pies. My mother loved them. With the pies, she would serve a little brown sugar and butter mixture, you know you mix up and just put a little scoop on the pie … that was their version of ice cream…. I guess they just liked to get away from the city in the summer and go out to the cabin.”

They would also visit Annie, who lived in the big old Jackson family home, with a sprawling porch and a grape arbor and (by then) a mostly vacant upstairs where the children would run and play.⁷²

French’s diaries reveal a quiet devoutness with regular attendance of church and various Christian organizations. Both she and Frank were active in the Methodist church in Shreveport during the year and in London during the summers. Frank was a member of the Board of Stewards in Shreveport; French’s diaries note regular teaching of Sunday school classes in both locations. She was also a constant attendee of the Missionary Society. Her language in her diaries is not overly religious, but, as we have seen, religion was a constant in her life.⁷³

Retirement and Later Years

French became head of the English Department at Centenary College in 1945. In 1948, she attended her last conference of the Louisiana chapter of the AAUW. It was the organization’s eightieth anniversary, and the group met, fittingly, in Shreveport. French retired from Centenary later that same year at the age of seventy-three with bouquets of accolades. Dr. J. Mickle, the president of Centenary, wrote: “Perhaps no teacher in the whole history of Centenary College has left a finer and deeper impression upon student life both within and without the classroom than you have done. The fine quality of your mind and spirit has been matched with a co-operative and constructive attitude on all matters pertaining to the development of Centenary College. Furthermore, your contribution to the Shreveport community as a whole has been tremendous. It has raised the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual level of the entire city.”⁷⁴

A proclamation from Mickle and the Board of Trustees declared: “[French] has created in her students a love of language and literature, and for two generations she has made Shakespeare live. She has had a lasting influence on the college and on the intellectual life of Shreveport. The Woman’s Department Club owes much to her efforts; she has given unstintingly of her gracious personality and her stimulating mind. Centenary College and Shreveport will long feel the far-reaching influence of Dr. Katherine Jackson French.”⁷⁵

The 1948 Yoncopin yearbook was dedicated to her and describes her as “a woman of profound scholarship, gracious charm, and splendid Christian character—a humanitarian in the fullest and finest meaning of the word”: “Hundreds of students have known, loved, and respected the value of so gifted a woman and would well appreciate the tribute of the student who recently said, ‘Dr. French transforms the tasks of education into a challenging adventure in learning.’”⁷⁶

French’s Centenary career can be traced through three photographs. The first photograph of “Mrs. Katherine French” appears in the 1930 yearbook. There were thirty-nine faculty members that year. French is one of eleven female teachers and the only one with a doctorate. In fact, of the men, only five have doctorates. Yet French is not referred to as Doctor. Her photograph appears on a page with those of two other female teachers. They wear earrings and pearls. French wears her academic regalia, robes and hood. The other two women bear soft, gentle gazes. One’s head is tilted down; the other gazes shyly at the camera through her makeup. French’s chin is lifted, her head uptilted, she wears no makeup, and her eyes are steely with a glint of humor. It is the kind of gaze that might be taken as condescending. Perhaps it was. We are looking at a woman who is proud of her accomplishments, unapologetic for her presence, and likely quite demanding of her charges. In short, we are looking at one tough woman who at the age of fifty-five is quite cognizant of the achievements of her life and the obstacles she has had to overcome.⁷⁷

The 1934 yearbook contains an even haughtier picture of French. It is in full profile, the only faculty photograph in which the subject does not deign to look into the camera, rather staring off into the distance as though with a far-seeing eye. It also bears an interesting comparison to her daughter’s picture in the same volume. This younger Katherine French was voted “Most Popular.” She has her mother’s long, somewhat horsey face and large lips, but her expression is softer. Indeed, she is a member of “the Maroon Jackets,” a club of college hostesses described as “overflowing with Southern hospitality.” She was a member of Chi Omega, like her mother, and served as treasurer. She looks like a well-adjusted, happy coed, with no trace of her mother’s hard expression.⁷⁸

The final picture, from the school paper This Is Centenary in August 1948, accompanies an article about French’s upcoming retirement. The older woman faces the camera. Her chin is still lifted, and she looks past the camera to the side. Her expression is softer, the eyes gently amused. The mouth holds a faint smile. Gone are the robes: she is wearing a jacket, blouse, and brooch. She is a woman whose battles are behind her, and she wears an expression of bemused contentment.⁷⁹

Dr. and Mr. French remained in Shreveport after her retirement. French settled into retirement, moping with loneliness, missing her grandchildren:

Lodestars of my life!

Two angels great and small

Why are you so lingering

And come not to me at all?

For light is drawing on

And after that the night!

Hark, now, I hear you softly

All is joy and bright.⁸⁰

The family continued to reunite in Kentucky in the summer and for some holidays as well. In July 1953, French was asked to be guest of honor at the 1954 Laurel County Homecoming.⁸¹

Other than one important incident that will be detailed in part 2, French did not seem to have had much in the way of excitement in her last years. In fact, to relieve her boredom, she spent time cataloging her huge personal collection of National Geographic magazines by volume, date, and subject matter on index cards. She lacked goals and adventure for the first time in her life. “My work is all over,” she wrote, “and I am lost.”⁸²

Katherine Jackson French, 1930. Courtesy of Centenary College of Louisiana Archives and Special Collections.

Katherine Jackson French, 1934. Courtesy of Centenary College of Louisiana Archives and Special Collections.

Katherine Jackson French, 1948. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.

On Christmas Eve, 1955, a fine winter night, twelve-year-old Kay Tolbert went to bed looking forward to Christmas festivities the next morning. Instead, she was wakened by a neighbor and told that her grandfather Frank was dead. His passing was a shock; he had been in seemingly fine health the day before, helping the family with holiday preparations. The body was returned to London and laid out in Annie Pollard’s home. The funeral service was held there two days later. The family attended, as did sixteen honorary bearers. French kept the ceremony book, making detailed notes of the hymns sung, scripture read, who the pallbearers were, who called (over 140 people), and what family and friends attended. She noted that “Crossing the Bar” was read at the grave and also took notes on the sermon, writing “Integrity, honor, justice, mercy, love for God and Man, happiness and usefulness to end” under the heading “Lessons from a good life.”⁸³

By the time Frank died, French’s son-in-law, Carl Tolbert, had already changed occupations and begun working for an insurance company, deciding that it would pay the bills better than teaching music and playing the clarinet and better enable him to provide for his family. In 1954, he accepted a job as an assistant manager for the firm and moved his family to Atlanta. French, her husband gone and her career over, went with them. Prior to her departure, the Woman’s Department Club of Shreveport awarded her a life membership: “No one in Shreveport has contributed so generously of both time and talent as have you, and now that you will be away from us part of the year we feel that we cannot pass up this opportunity to say a hearty ‘thank you’ from us all.”⁸⁴

After a short time in Atlanta, Carl accepted a promotion to the position of manager and moved the family to Columbia, South Carolina, during the summer of 1957. Columbia was a good-sized city by then, and Kay Tolbert Buckland remembers the family living across the street from a lake in a neighborhood with many pine trees. The house had a large porch, and neighborhood children would sleep out on it on cots during the summer while the adults played cards.⁸⁵

“The Rose Still Grows beyond the Wall”

By this time, however, French had started to ail. Past useful work, separated from her sister Annie, who was “so alone and not well,” and away from the two cities she loved (Shreveport and London), she began to succumb to the heart ailment that had plagued her for decades. She was bedridden almost from the day she moved with Carl and Katherine to Columbia. Her daughter tried to care for her, and a Dr. Miller made house calls, but she worsened. She was able to come downstairs for Christmas dinner, which Jackson’s niece Eloise Jackson Pennington says “made [them] all feel better.” But French was not to heal.⁸⁶

French’s daughter, Katherine, called R.Z., the African American woman who had worked as a servant for French during her many years in Shreveport. R.Z. came to Columbia, staying between six and nine months and tending French. The time came when even R.Z.’s ministrations were not enough, and French was placed in a nursing home in Columbia. According to Kay Toland Buckland, Carl and Katherine had “a huge battle”: “My father insisted…. And I remember how upset my mother was because she did not want to put Grandmother in the nursing home…. It was a very difficult time for her.”⁸⁷

French suffered several heart attacks during her stay at the rest home. Her daughter visited her there “all the time,” Kay Buckland remembered. “I went some with her…. She [French] was just laying there, almost not even aware.”⁸⁸

On Monday, November 10, 1958, Katherine Jackson French passed from this world. And thus the family gathered one last time in French’s beloved London.

“Grandmother wouldn’t have wanted us to cry and be sad,” said Kay Buckland. “She would have wanted us to sing and be happy.” And sing they did: “There was some member of the family, and I couldn’t tell you who it was, probably someone Mother’s age or maybe one of their children, could play the piano and could play by ear. And so we sang all night long…. I don’t remember the songs. Everybody sang…. I don’t remember whose house we went back to, but it was after the ceremony and all. I just remember for several hours we all sang … all songs that everybody knew but I couldn’t tell you what they were.”⁸⁹

Services were conducted on Thursday, November 13. Over seventy friends signed the “Those Who Called” book. There were forty-seven floral tributes. As at Frank’s funeral, Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar” appears in the program:

But such a tide as moving seems asleep

Too full for tide and foam

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.⁹⁰

Katherine Jackson French was laid to rest next to her husband, Frank, in the Jackson family founders’ plot in the Russell Dyche Cemetery in London. Her grave lies less than a mile from where she grew up.

Tributes poured in from Shreveport. Books were placed in libraries in French’s honor, charities given money in her name. Several boxes of letters in regard to her death still exist. “You’d think everybody in Shreveport knew my grandmother,” said Kay Buckland.⁹¹ One letter reads: “Think of all the people whose lives were enriched because she passed their way.” Another notes: “She was such a wonderful woman that it is difficult to put into writing what we, her friends, feel. Erudite, stimulating, yet down to earth and interested in the minutest bit that affected people and particularly her friends, which are legion. Public spirited, gregarious, deeply spiritual, and a great inspiration to so many both in the cultural and religious life of our community, her name will ever be enchrined [sic] in the hearts of her friends, the church, the organizations to which she belonged.”⁹²

Cecelia Ellerbe, her fellow cofounder of the Shreveport Woman’s Department Club, had the last word on Katherine Jackson French. At the club’s tribute to French the following January, she read a poem she had written in honor of her friend:

Let this be said, for honor is her due,

She was a teacher, one who loved this art

That was the highest privilege she knew

By right of knowledge, that she could impart

The meaning of a life is in its thought

And in the measure of the mind its test

The good she knew, the wisdom that she sought

These were the substance of her last bequest

To keep when strength had failed and breath was spent

To be her final wish and testament.

The years have gone, and life has reached its end,

Now Peace belongs to her, scholar and friend.⁹³

Dr. Katherine Jackson French. Courtesy of Kay Tolbert Buckland.

Katherine Jackson French lived many lives in her one life: daughter, sister, wife, student, schoolteacher, professor, mother, writer, traveler, friend, neighbor, community member, dean, genealogist, Sunday school teacher, scholar, founder of an important women’s department club and inspiration to the women of Shreveport, leader of university women, and pioneer ballad collector. Despite an ongoing heart condition and a world unaccustomed to the achievements of women, she accomplished all this on her own terms.

The opening page of the service book for French’s funeral reads: “If life is sacred, it should not be allowed to perish…. We are not dead until we are forgotten.”⁹⁴ Sadly, Katherine Jackson French has indeed been forgotten. Traces of her are impossible to find in her birthplace. No one there remembers any mention of her. Only a few echoes linger in Shreveport. There is no mention of her at Centenary College, no statue, no plaque, no marker, although a framed photograph and an inscribed gold plaque of Dr. Stewart A. Steger hangs outside the office of the chair of the English Department.⁹⁵ There are no markers to her at the Shreveport First Methodist Church, though she taught Sunday school there for thirty-one years. Streets bear the names of other founders of the Woman’s Department Club—Ellerbe, Wilkinson—but the only monument to her is the lonely plaque that hangs in the back of the auditorium of the Shreveport Woman’s Department Club, thanking her for sharing her gifts and changing the lives of thousands of women.

This remarkable pioneer—the first collector, male or female, to attempt to publish a large scholarly collection of southern Appalachian ballads, a mover and shaker in the Louisiana AAUW, the cofounder of the Shreveport Woman’s Department Club, a beloved professor at Centenary College, and a proud daughter of London, Kentucky—has been consigned to obscurity by the passing of years and a seemingly willful ignorance on the part of her time and ours regarding the accomplishments of such women. That her feats have largely been ignored or forgotten makes them no less glorious. She was a giant, and like many other forgotten giants, she paved the way for other women who followed, breaking down walls that might still be in place without her efforts. Indeed, “honor is her due,” and hers is a name worthy of remembrance.