The Saint Louis University students

This post continues the discussing from the blogposts "Arnold Ross and the desegregation of Saint Louis University" and "The Saint Louis University students."

A companion post on Arnold Ross is the blogpost "Arnold Ross and the Afro-Am Student Protests" which discusses Arnold Ross's involvement with African American student protests at The Ohio State University.

I find it striking that, for all the attention given to the desegregation of Saint Louis University, almost nothing is said about the first African American students to enroll.  The most detailed account I have found is McCarthy's 1951 article "Facing the Race Problem at St. Louis University" in the Jesuit Educational Quarterly.  Here is what he says: "Five Negro students were therefore admitted to the 1944 summer sessions.  Two were male undergraduate who were enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences.  Two men and one women, all public school teachers, were admitted to the Graduate School."

That is not much to go on.  I haven't been able to find any informations about the undergraduate students, but I was able to figure out the first students to receive master's degrees.  Recall the African American students were first admitted in summer 1944.  As far as I can tell, a master's degree was first awarded to an African American in May 1946.  That was when Margaret Taylor received her M.S. degree, and as far as I can tell, she was the only African American to graduate that year.  The next year, in June 1947, a larger cohort of African Americans students graduated.  The people I have identified are the following.

Sylvester Smith
Photo from Kinloch: Missouri's First All Black Town

Sylvester LeClaire Smith
Like Margaret Taylor, Smith's family had moved to St Louis from Mississippi.  Smith was born in 1915 in Macon, Mississippi to a large family of twelve boys and four girls.  When he was young, his family had moved to Kinloch, Missouri (a predominately African American city near the St Louis airport) to escape white supremacist violence.  He graduated from the second class of Vashon High School in 1932 and then enrolled at Lincoln University.  After completing a B.S. degree in education in 1937, he returned to Kinloch and began working the public school system.  Starting as a first grade teacher, he was rapidly promoted, becoming principal in 1938 and superintendent of schools in 1943.

Smith received a Masters of Education degree based on his thesis "Suggested procedure for an audio-visual program in an urban high school district." Smith spent his adult life in St Louis and was an active and involved member of the community.  He is featured, for example, in Lift every voice and sing: St. Louis African-Americans in the twentieth century: narratives, a collection of stories about African Americans in St Louis.  A Kinloch elementary school, Smith Elementary School, was named after him.  Smith died in 2005.

Everett Thaddeus Walker
Everett Thaddeus Walker was born in 1912 in Memphis, Tennessee.  After high school, he attended  LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne-Owen College), receiving an A.B. degree in 1939.  After college, he worked in Memphis and married Alpha Thames in 1942.  Shortly after marrying, he joined the U.S. Army and achieved the rank of staff sergeant.

After the war ended, he moved to St Louis and enrolled in Saint Louis University's graduate program.  He graduated with a Masters of Education specializing in government, history, and education, and he wrote a thesis on "The Political Status of the Negro in the South."

After receiving his master's degree, Walker taught in the St Louis public school system for a number of years.  He taught Social Studies and held the positions of Counselor and Administrator in Vashon, Slogan, and Northwestern High Schools. He taught for over 35 years and worked part-time as a real estate salesman. Walker died in 2008.

Nathaniel Watlington
Nathaniel Watlington was born in Matoaka, West Virginia in 1916, and he went to university at Hampton Institute, receiving a B.S. in 1939.  After college, he served in the Army for three years.

It was after serving in the army that he entered Saint Louis University as a graduate student.  He was an education student, and he received a Masters of Education with a thesis on "Legislation Affecting Negro Education in the Southern State".

The year before he completed his master's degree, he joined the faculty at Stowe Teachers College (now Harris-Stowe State University) where he taught until 1991 when he retired as an associate professor of biology. He can be seen in a group photo of college faculty in the book The Ville, St. Louis.

When he was in his 60s, Watlington returned to school and graduated in 1980 with a doctor of chiropractic from Logan College of Chiropractic in Chesterfield.  He worked as a chiropractor in St Louis for a numbers of years.  Watlington died in 2002.

Clovis Alonzo Bordeaux
Clovis A. Bordeaux was born in St Louis in 1917 to Elizabeth and Sam Bordeaux.  His father played baseball in the St Louis Negro League.  Bordeaux graduated from Sumner High School in 1934 and then received a B.S. in from Lincoln University in 1939. After college, he studied engineering at the Milwaukee School of Engineering and received a certificate in Radio Engineering. He was unable to find a job that used his technical training and ended up working odd jobs until 1941 when he enlisted in the Army Air Corp.

Bordeaux enlisted for 4 years and volunteered to serve in the 99th Pursuit Squadron – the first army flying unit for African Americans.  This was one of the units comprising the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen.  Bordeaux served in the Mediterranean and was a communications NCO, attaining the rank of Technical Sergeant.  Bordeaux said that his class of recruits was highly talented.  Everyone was a college graduate with technical or scientific training, including one math PhD.  The math PhD was almost certainly Luna Mishoe, the former president of Delaware State College and a graduate of South Carolina's own Allen University.

Bordeaux enrolled at Saint Louis University shortly after leaving the army.  Bordeaux graduated with a Masters of Science with a thesis on "A quantitative spectrographic determination of lead in zinc."  After getting his degree, he then moved to Chicago and worked on the Cyclotron Project with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago.  Later he and his family moved to California, where he worked at the Hughes Aircraft Company. Bordeaux died in 2011 at age 93.

Intriguingly none of his obituaries mention his degree from SLU (although they do mention his degrees from Lincoln and Milwaukee).

Clovis A.Bordeaux
From the St. Louis American, May 24, 2011

Who were the first students?
In his article, McCarthy says that the first entering class of African American students included three graduate students, one woman and two men.  If these numbers are correct, Taylor, Smith, Walker, Watlington, and Bordeaux couldn't all have been in the first entering class.  So who was?

The only person I am certain was in the entering class was Smith.  Both in his obituary and at SLU commemorations, Smith is described as entering as a student in June 1944.  Since Taylor graduated in 1946, it is natural to guess that she was also in the class, but of course, she could have enrolled in, say, Fall semester.

Bordeaux probably wasn't enrolled since he never taught in the public school and the first graduate students are all described as teachers.  That leaves Watlington and Walker, although the student could also have been someone who didn't graduate.

With more archival work, one could probably get a more complete picture of the early African American students at SLU.  A great project for an interested student!

(Other posts on St. Louis University are here and here.)