[Autograph Album Compiled by a Young African American Woman.]

Taylor and Austin, Texas, 1936. Good +. 4½" x 6". String-tied commercial autograph book with 112 pages, 35 of which contain handwritten text. Good plus: wrappers moderately soiled and worn; scattered small stains to most pages.

This is an autograph book compiled by a young woman attending Blackshear High School (BHS), Allyne E.B. "Polly" Lewis. BHS was the first high school for African Americans in Taylor, Texas. Lewis went on to a long career as a beloved schoolteacher and Baptist women's leader.

The first school for Black students in Taylor opened around 1881 and operated under various names. In 1918, Oliver Lewis (O.L.) Price (truncated) became principal of the "Col*red School" of Taylor; at the time there were five teachers and fewer than ten students in the school. Price renamed the school in honor of Edward L. Blackshear, the noted African American educator and president of Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College (now Prairie View A&M University). Price also served as president of the Ne*ro State Teacher Association from 1914 to 1945. After his death in 1948, BHS was renamed O.L. Price High School in his honor.

This memory book began with a list of Polly's teachers, with O.L. Price listed first. There was also a list of her classmates, as well as 30 full pages of inscriptions, one student per page, with two thirds of them by young women. Nearly all of the entries followed the same format, in which the writer entered their name, "pet" or nickname, and "classification" or year. The students also listed a favorite hobby, dish, drink and song, as well as who they would consider their "rival," friends, and "sweetie." Each entry also had a personalized note. The notes were mainly sentiments of forget-me-not or "card me" with some students listing addresses in Brooklyn, Detroit, Oakland, Houston and San Antonio. A few had poems such as "When you are married and having twins don't bother me for safety pins" and "Love many trust few always paddle your own canoe."

Two later entries were inscribed while Allyne was a student at Tillotson College, now known as the HBCU Huston-Tillotson University (HTU). Established in 1875, HTU was the first institution of higher learning in Austin, Texas. Allyne Lewis graduated from Tillotson in 1940 and became an art teacher at Govalle Elementary School in Austin. On a website recognizing Govalle's 85th anniversary, we found a message from a former student who said that Lewis had inspired her to become a community leader, and "encouraged all her students to 'dream big.' She was known to many of her students as 'Mama Lewis' because of her . . . loving and protective words and she gave the best hugs." Lewis went on to become the general supervisor of the Children's Department of the National Baptist Convention. She was one of five United States delegates to the Baptist World Alliance Congress in Stockholm, where she addressed the Pre-Congress Women's Conference, and she was one of 300 women invited to attend the Baptist Women's Leadership Conference prior to the Baptist World Congress in Seoul.

A memory book showcasing the lives of young African Americans at a noted Black school in Texas, compiled by a woman who went on to be a religious and community leader. (Inventory #: 7263)