8 July 1899: Opera House Hosts Night School Exhibition

On this day in 1899, the East Athens Night School hosted its second annual exhibition at the Athens Opera House. The Athens Daily Banner announced the event and location on their front page the day before, along with the Honor Roll for the term:

The East Athens Night School began in 1897 and was put under the direction of Miss Louie A. Lane, the daughter of the longtime pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Athens. She was a graduate of the Lucy Cobb Institute, and became a school teacher. Known to all as "Miss Louie," she never married and became, in the words of Susan Frances Barrow Tate, "a one-woman welfare society."  

Miss Louie lived in East Athens, where many of the mill workers also lived. As a teacher, it bothered her that so many children in Athens had to work while the public schools were open, and therefore would never get an education or have a chance at improving their lives. Whenever a family needed clothes for their children, blankets, even food, Miss Louie would consult her list of good hearted women of Athens to find the items she needed. Many of these same women were responsible for setting up the East Athens Night School in the first place, publicizing the cause in the newspaper and holding socials at the Y.W.C.A. to raise money and get donations of school books, notebooks, paper, pencils, and even desks and chairs. They were always in need of more school books, as well as books of all types for the school's small lending library, which received heavy use by the students. Even after the Night School was incorporated into the Athens school system, donations were still required to meet demand.

The first night of school in early December, 1987, 10 students enrolled. Less than a week later, there were 18 students enrolled, including "two girls, 12 and 13 years of age, who are just now receiving their first opportunity to learn their alphabet." Twenty days after the school opened, there were 27 students enrolled, and they had, as a group, decided not to take any holiday for Christmas. After a month of operation, 40 students had enrolled and 15 more wanted to, but the room, an empty store front on Oconee Street, could not hold more students. A new room was added, and by the end of the term, a total of 68 students had enrolled. 

According to the 1900 U.S. Census, most of the students on the Honor Roll listed in the story above were between 12 and 21 years old in 1899, and most worked at the cotton or knitting mills, though the Patterson brothers were listed as "Harness Makers." 

Classes lasted from 6:30pm to 9pm "every night in the week except Saturday." Miss Louie told the Banner that the students "are anxious to learn and that her work is thus rendered exceedingly pleasant." The following term, Miss May Smoak was added as a teacher's assistant, but the school continued to grow, and by 1901 had over 150 students enrolled, including many adults who had never been taught to read and write. Business classes in bookkeeping were added, and over the years, the school allowed children who worked in the mills during the day to have the skills to eventually work as clerks in downtown offices as well as start their own businesses. All of them remembered and would often visit with Miss Louie, who never left her little home in their old neighborhood.

When Miss Louie died in October, 1939, the Athens Banner-Herald called her "the Jane Addams of Athens, who devoted her life to a career of unselfish service to humankind."  She was called "unassuming, understanding, generous, intelligent, and loving" and the paper noted that "she could hardly help being held up by others as a shining example of the things she strived so hard to inculcate in all with him she was associated."  Among her pall bearers were some of her students from the East Athens Night School's first few years. She is buried in an unmarked grave with her family at Oconee Hill Cemetery.

Learn More:

• Athens Daily Banner, July, 1899 - Dec., 1899 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Athens Historic Newspaper Archive collection in the Digital Library of Georgia.
• Athens Observer on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Remembering Athens by Susan Frances Barrow Tate in the Heritage and general collections.
• The First Presbyterian Church of Athens, Georgia 1820-1970 by the Sesqui-Centennial Committee in the Heritage and general collections.
• Oconee Hill Cemetery, Athens, Georgia, Volume I by Charlotte Thomas Marshall in the Heritage and general collections.
• Up Before Daybreak: Cotton and the American People by Deborah Hopkinson in the children's collection.
• Child Labor: An American History by Hugh D. Hindman in the general collection.
• The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience by Kirstin Downey in the biography collection.
• January 1905 by Katharine Boling in the children's fiction collection.
• The Men and the Mills: A History of the Southern Textile Industry by Mildred Gwin Andrews in the general collection.
• The Most They Ever Had by Rick Bragg in the general collection.
• So Far From Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl by Barry Denenberg in the young adult collection.
• Rise Gonna Rise: A Portrait of Southern Textile Workers by Mimi Conway in the general collection.

9 November 1948: U. S. Post Office Issues Moina Michael Stamp in Athens

On this day in 1948, at 8 o'clock in the morning, the Moina Michael poppy stamp went on sale in Athens, Georgia. Collectors lined up at the windows of the post office hours before they opened, and a parade featuring legion organizations, both University and high school R.O.T.C. and marching bands, and "a number of tanks" led to a ceremony at the Fine Arts Building on the University of Georgia campus. The presentation included speeches by many government officials, and a message sent by President Harry S Truman.

Miss Michael was lauded as "a great American woman, able educator, and valiant crusader who has contributed to veterans of this country and other countries. Her name will always be gratefully remembered by the people of this nation."

The 3-cent stamp, now seven times as valuable, was issued two days before Armistice Day (now known as Veterans Day or Remembrance Day) because it was on November 9th, 1918, that Miss Michael came up with the idea to use the poppy as a symbol of remembrance for fallen soldiers.

In 1918, Miss Michael had taken a leave of absence from her educational work in Athens to volunteer with the YWCA Overseas War Workers training headquarters at Columbia University in New York. On November 9th, the YMCA was hosting the 25th Conference of Overseas Secretaries in New York. During a moment of downtime during the conference, she read the poem now known as In Flanders Field by Canadian Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in a copy of Ladies Home Journal. She was inspired by the poem to write a response, titled We Shall Keep the Faith.

Later that day, a group of men from the conference brought Miss Michael a check for $10.00, in appreciation of the effort she'd made, at her own expense, to "make a home-like Hostess House of their headquarters." She replied that she would use the money to buy red poppies, "I shall always wear red poppies--poppies of Flanders Fields!" Miss Michael showed the men the McCrae poem, as well as the one she had just written. The men took both poems with them back into their meeting while Miss Michael went in search of cloth poppies, finally finding 25 of them at Wanamaker's department store. She returned to the hall to find men gathered around her desk, asking for poppies to wear in their lapels. It was then Moina Michael had the idea of using cloth poppy sales to raise money for the widows and orphans left behind by fallen soldiers.

A year later, while teaching a class of disabled veterans at the University of Georgia, Miss Michael came to realize that many soldiers who returned from the war needed assistance as well. She campaigned to have the poppy not just a memorial flower, but one of remembrance for all veterans who served their countries. The flower was adopted by veterans groups from around the world in the early 1920s, and before long, Moina Michael was internationally known as "The Poppy Lady." By the time of her death in 1944, nearly $200 million had been raised for disabled vets by the sale of poppies in the United States alone.

Poppies are still made by disabled veterans and sold for Veterans Day and Remembrance Day, in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia. You can also make your own to wear this Veterans Day, Thursday, November 11th.

Learn More:

• The Miracle Flower: The Story of the Flanders Fields Memorial Poppy by Moina Belle Michael in the Heritage and general collections.
• In Flanders Fields by Norman Jorgensen in the children's collection.
• Athens Banner-Herald, Oct. 1948 - Jan. 1949 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Prominent Women of Georgia, edited by James B. Nevin in the Heritage collection.
• Dictionary of Georgia Biography, Volume 2, edited by Kenneth Coleman and Charles Stephen Gurr in the Heritage collection.
• The Complete Illustrated Guide to Stamp Collecting by James A. Mackay in the general collection.
• Great Poets of WWI: Poetry from the Great War, edited by Jon Stallworthy in the general collection.
• A Pictorial History of the World War I Years by Edward Jablonski in the general collection.
• The Great War by Correlli Barnett in the general collection.
• The Mammoth Book of War Diaries and Letters: Life on the Battlefield in the Words of the Ordinary Soldier, 1775-1991 by Jon E. Lewis in the general collection.
• Moina Michael biography on The Great War, 1914-1918 website.
• In Flanders Fields Museum website.

16 March 1930: Free Cooking School Offered By Athens Women's Club

On this day in 1930, the Athens Women's Club announced that they would offer a free four-day cooking school on the theme "Efficiency in the Kitchen." The course would cover how to select kitchen equipment, how to shop economically in hard times, and "the right food rightly prepared."

Each day, the class would be led by a different expert, starting with Miss Catherine Counsell from the Home Economics Department of the Georgia State Teacher's College, formerly the State Normal School, on Prince Avenue. Two of the other classes were led by members of the University of Georgia's College of Agriculture Extension Department faculty, covering "The Kitchen Beautiful" and "Health Day," with an emphasis on "Family Health and its place in the community." There would also be a day devoted to entertaining and how to organize large events, including examples of "tables set correctly for various occasions."

The meetings were held at the Y.W.C.A., then located on Hancock Avenue. Local businesses had donated "a great variety of the city's best food for demonstration and cooking. Merchants contributing this supply have added most materially to the success of the school and the selection is most adequate for menus...which will inspire all housewives."

The Athens Women's Club started out as a literary society, with club members offering talks about art, literature, nature, and current events. Over time, they became more involved in community service, at one point starting their own free kindergarten for the children of mill workers. Proper nutrition was considered part of public health, and therefore a community service.

In the early 1900s, University Extension Services were established to take innovations and methods developed at the state schools out to those who were outside the world of academia. This included agricultural knowledge, but also a strong focus nutrition and health for growing families, outreach work still provided by Extension Services to their local communities today.

Learn More:

• Athens Banner-Herald, Nov. 1929 - Mar. 1930 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• A Portrait of Athens and Clarke County by Frances Taliaferro Thomas in the Heritage and general collections.
• Memorabilia of the Athens Woman's Club: Its Projects and Interests by Marguerite B. Sheffer in the Heritage collection.
• 1929 Pandora, yearbook for the University of Georgia, in the Heritage collection.
• 1928-1929 Athens City Directory in the Heritage collection.
• For Our Mutual Benefit: The Athens Women's Club and Social Reform 1899 - 1920, part of the Digital Library of Georgia.
• UGA Cooperative Extension Services web page.

28 December 1907 - An Escape from the Asylum

On this day in 1907, the Athens Banner published a front-page story about a young woman named Miss Este Parkman who had come to the local Y.W.C.A. claiming to be recently emancipated from the Hapeville orphanage and hoping to find a stenographer job in Athens. According the article, Miss Parkman was "tall, emaciated, even melancholy in her appearance."

When the lady disappeared the next day, it was discovered she was not from the orphanage, but had escaped from the asylum in Milledgeville, something "the authorities" at the asylum did not realize until the Y.W.C.A. called in concern over Miss Parkman's welfare. She was last seen purchasing a train ticket to Atlanta at the Southern depot, and nothing more was published about her in the surviving newspapers.

Many colleges and universities, including the University of Georgia, did not admit women in the early 20th century. For many young women, their only option was attending business school to learn stenography, shorthand, bookkeeping, and typing. The Y.W.C.A. offered these women, who frequently had leave their families to find office work in larger towns, a safe and reputable place to live. The Y.W.C.A. had women-only residences throughout the United States and all over the world. In Athens, the Y.W.C.A. was on the corner of N. Thomas and Washington Streets, where the Hilton Garden Inn is today.

Learn More:

• Athens Banner, Mar. 1906 - Dec., 1907 on Microfilm in the Heritage collection.
• Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States by Alice Kessler-Harris in the general collection.
• Hope and Danger in the New South City by Georgina Hickey in the Heritage collection.
• 1909 Athens City Directory in the Heritage collection.
• History of Baldwin County Georgia by Anna Maria Green Cook in the Heritage collection.
• East Central Georgia in Vintage Postcards by Gary L. Doster in the Heritage and general collections.
• Central State Hospital history website.