The City of Grambling: Historical Information

By Reginald Owens

So there is a city named Grambling?

This is the typical response a Gramblinite gets after answering the question "Where is Grambling State University located?"

"The name Grambling - the city and community - is dwarfed in recognition by the world-renown school that bears its name.

Many are surprised to learn that there is a city called Grambling and a thriving community of African-Americans who have lived independently in the area for more than a century.

Grambling is an American success story created by both the best and the worst circumstances in U. S. history. Newly freed African-American captives settled here for jobs because they had few places to go. After the Emancipation Proclamation, they worked to build an independent community and fulfill the spirit of the American Dream.

A mostly African-American city and the fastest growing municipality in Lincoln Parish, Grambling has a population of more than 5,000. Grambling is the hometown of Paul "Tank" Younger, the first African-American to play football for the National Football League. This North Louisiana city also is the home of a university with the winningest football coach in the world. the legendary Eddie G. Robinson and the late Conrad Hutchinson Jr., the Grambling legend in American college band performance.

The community, however, extends beyond the limits of the incorporated city. Grambling's growth and spiritual vitality through the years has been fed from surrounding church communities such as Mt. Olive, Liberty Hill, Mt. Harmony, Mt. Calm, Fellowship and other areas with large African-American populations. Grambling has historically been the political, economic and social hub for surrounding African-American communities.

"Blacks in this area owned large tracts of land" in the late 1800s, said Lawrence Gamer, associate professor of history at the university. Many bought land from former slave owners and rented the land to Black sharecroppers who, in turn, gave the landowners part of their crop as payment. These entrepreneurial land owners also hired Blacks from surrounding communities to tend their crops and work the land.

Many of these African-American landowners or their children were captives on local plantations before the Emancipation Proclamation. After freedom, they bought large tracks of land from their former masters, said Gamer.

These ex-captives-turned-landowners attracted other African-Americans from surrounding areas. There was opportunity here for Blacks where little existed in other places in the region and the South.
"They (Blacks) came as laborers," Gamer said of hundreds of Blacks who migrated to the area from surrounding communities and towns throughout North Louisiana.

Gamer's great-great-grandfather, was one of the early Black landowners who figured prominently in the history of the Grambling community -before a school was founded, according to Dr. Doris Dorcas Carter in her 1970 master's thesis, "Charles P. Adams and Grambling College." Carter is professor of history at Grambling State University.

"Grambling came into existence through the efforts of a number of former slaves and their children who had lived on neighboring plantations," Carter wrote, citing the late Grambling historian Earl Maxie. According to Carter, Grambling was carved from portions of the following plantations: Sims', Simsboro; Gullatt's, west of the railroad running between Grambling and Ruston; Grant's, near Cooktown Road; Cobb's, near Vienna; and the plantations of Thomas Standifer, Charlie Green, Frank Thompson and Jim Gipson.

Grambling's history as a distinct African-American community began in 1875 when Richmond bought a 160-acre tract from Jim Gipson, a former slave owner, Carter wrote. Gipson had purchased the land from Thomas Standifer, also a former slave owner. The land, site of the present-day city of Grambling, was later inherited by Richmond's son, Lafayette (Fate), who became one of the founding fathers of the community that would become Grambling.

The name Grambling came from P. G. Grambling, a European American, who leased land from the younger Richmond in 1887 to build a sawmill. The sawmill was located near an area north of the railroad which runs east-west through the city and south of the present-day Interstate 20. Because of the sawmill, the train would stop in the community to pick up lumber.

The Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad started calling it the "Grambling stop" for P. G. Grambling's sawmill; there- fore, the name stuck. The mill operated for about ten years, according to Thelma Smith Williams in her book, Grambling: A Pictorial History.

Carter noted that some women in the community started a movement in the early part of this century to change the name of the community to Richmond in honor of its African-American founder, but the sister of P. G. Grambling asked that the Grambling name remain in honor of her brother.

The elder Richmond and his brothers bought hundreds of acres of land and sold parcels to other Blacks who came to the area, Garner noted. This type of entrepreneurial activity by Richmond and other African-American landowners opened the way for Blacks to migrate here from throughout the North Louisiana region.

They (black landowners) provided economic livelihood for hundreds of Black families in and around Grambling", said Garner. "People used to come from all over Lincoln and surrounding parishes to pick cotton."

The Richmonds were among a handful of the early African-American settlers in the area who purchased land for farming and sharecropping. Sharecropping developed during the Reconstruction Era as a means for many former African- American captives and poor Whites to make a living in an agriculture-based economy.

As a result, Grambling became a major North Louisiana settlement area for African-Americans in the region and Blacks who were part of the westward migration of freed slaves from the Southeastern United States after the Civil War. Other African-Americans who owned large tracts of land before the 1900s in the area were William Reamor, Robert Youngblood, C. H. Land, Dennis Hollis, Gus May and the Younger brothers (Gene, Louis and Sherman). These men owned hundreds of acres of land and freely bought and traded in land with both Blacks and Whites. Their land formed the nucleus of an area that would later spawn the first African-American municipality in Louisiana and an internationally known African-American university.

MAKING A LIVING

The initial attraction to the Grambling area was economic -former African captives seeking a way to make a living, Gamer noted.

These early Lincoln Parish settlers also were part of the late 1800s Agrarian/Progressive movement in the U.S. that promoted ownership of land and the equipment to work the land, according to Garner. The movement prompted the formation of African-American churches, religious organizations and agricultural cooperatives.

For most Blacks coming to the area, Grambling presented a rare economic opportunity during a period when African- Americans were the victims of some of the most violent and racist actions in U .S. history. It was difficult for former African captives to find employment or even a safe place from White antagonism and attack. Following the defeat of the Southern Slavocracy, millions of ex-captives were suddenly thrust into the job market to compete with already resentful poor Whites for the scarce economic resources of a defeated South. This contributed to a tide of White racism that prompted an increase in the number of lynching and other physical attacks on Blacks.

During this critical period, Black communities throughout the South and Southwest were safe havens for African-Americans moving westward trying to find a place following the Civil War - Grambling included.

REPUBLICAN ACTIVITY

Another factor in the development of Grambling was White Radical and Black Republican activity .The White Radical Republicans were sympathetic to African-American development and needed African-American support for their political survival. This set the stage for African-American empowerment and education in Grambling. Specifically, Allen Greene was the foremost White Republican in the area to help African-Americans to get political access. The efforts of Greene and other Republicans drew the ire of local Southern Democrats who had fought for the Confederacy and to maintain White supremacy in the South.

Lincoln parish, a hotbed of Radical Republican activity was named for President Abraham Lincoln. It was carved out of Claiborne, Jackson, Bienville and Union parishes in 1873 ''as a Reconstruction parish to strengthen the political power of State Senator Allen Greene and the Radicals," according to Curtis Leroy Sikes, Jr. in his 1975 master's thesis, "Political Reconstruction in Lincoln Parish."

For more than 10 years starting in the mid- 1860s, White Democrats fighting for the old Confederacy actively devised methods to deny Blacks the right to vote and to control their social and economic activities -a literal return to captivity for African- Americans. Through a series of constitutional conventions and elections, the White Republicans and Blacks gained political control in many areas in the state. The local Republicans' political hand

was also strengthened when Congress passed its first Reconstruction Act, placing Louisiana and other areas of the South's military control, Sikes noted. This essentially weakened the political posture of local White Democrats and strengthened the political standing of Blacks and White Republicans.

For African Americans, military control under a sympathetic Republican U.S. Congress allowed new registration of African-Americans, who outnumbered Whites in 1867, Sikes noted.

The political elevation of these former African captives and White Republicans aroused the resentment of local White Democrats. Sikes noted that the White Democrats at first tried to use peaceful means to win the favor of African-Americans. When that failed, they resorted to "trickery , intimidation and bloodshed," which led to the formation of the Klu Klux Klan and the Knights of the White Camellia. Thus began an effective fight against European-American and African-American Republicans.

Many acts of violence took place in north Louisiana, including Lincoln Parish, where both African-American; and Whites lost their lives. They were both determined -the former plantation captives to be free and the former slaver owners to wrest back control of the South.

This era of White Radical and African-American Republican rule in Louisiana ended when Rutherford B. Hayes signed the Compromise of 1877, withdrawing federal troops from the South.

After 1877, African-Americans continued to be victims of intimidation, lynchings and other illegal actions as White southerners regained political and social control when the U.S. troops began to leave the South.

BLACKS ORGANIZING FOR SELF-HELP

African-Americans responded to this new wave of violence by building institutions to help them through one of the most difficult periods in their history in North Louisiana, Lafayette Richmond led the effort to organize African- Americans for social, political and economic self-help.

The efforts started with individual churches in the late 1860s and, later, church groups. For this area, Grambling became the meeting place for African-American organizations.

In 1882, sixteen churches met at Liberty Hill Baptist Church in Knowles, about three miles north of Grambling, to form the Liberty Hill Baptist Association, an organization of churches located in North Central Louisiana. Rev. Phillip Lewis Sr., founding pastor of Liberty Hill Baptist Church and one of the principal organizers of the association, was elected the first president of the group. He also was one of the large African- American land owners in the area. Lewis did not live to serve out his term. His son would later become an influence in this organization and in the Allen Greene Normal and Industrial Bible Institute which the group later established and which became Grambling State University.

It is because of the political networking of North Louisiana churches that Grambling became a focal point for area African- Americans.

"This (the church) is how you get the interconnectedness of the communities of this region (Grambling)," said Gamer. "That is why Grambling even today is connected to scores of communities throughout North Louisiana. It was through the church."

Richmond was one of the first African Americans to see the need for Blacks in the region to begin major community- building projects. As early as 1887, he and other African- Americans had "talked in undertones of the many problems" that existed between Blacks and Whites in North Louisiana, Dr. Carter's thesis noted. "Richmond conceived the idea that one way Negroes could help themselves would be through some type of farm relief organization," Carter wrote. "For nine years following this encounter, Richmond walked, rode horseback, and traveled on the train to different places in Lincoln and adjoining parishes, meeting people in churches and talking to them about his idea of establishing a farm organization."

In 1896, under Richmond's leadership and in the spirit of the Agrarian/Progressive movement of the time, a mass meeting was held to discuss the concerns of African-Americans in the region. The result was the North Louisiana Colored Agricultural Relief Association Union. Lafayette Richmond was elected its first president, Carter noted. This organization consisted of more than 1,500 members representing five parishes: Lincoln, Jackson, Claibome, Union and Ouachita.

Gamer said that members of the Liberty Hill Baptist Association were also members of this new farmers' group. "They worked together. These were basically the same people," Gamer noted.

In 1899, the organization decided to make Grambling its headquarters and to establish an industrial training school for the children of the area, according to Carter. That year, the group also bought a 22-acre tract of land for the school. The site was located about one mile northwest of the present campus of Grambling State University and served as the founding site of the university. An historical marker, however, on the present grounds of the Liberty Hill Baptist Association lists 1896 as the founding date of the school.

THEN CAME CHARLES P. ADAMS

When Charles P. Adams stepped off the train August 4, 1901 in front of what is now Mt. Zion Baptist Church on West Martin Luther King Drive, he was met by the Revs. Dennis Hollis and P. B. Lewis, Dr .Mildred Gallot notes in her history of the university. At 6'4", Adams was an imposing man to these two representatives of the local farmers and church groups, said Gallot, who chairs the History and Geography Department at the university.

African Americans were busy building" a community when Adams came to town to head a school started by the local farmers and ministers.

For the Grambling community , Adams' arrival marked the beginning of a major influx of African-Americans from distant places -both within the state and other areas especially in the Southeast U.S.

Three things contributed to the growth of Grambling as an African-American city during this period. First, the political and social turmoil of the late 1800s helped to establish the area as the economic and cultural center for African-Americans in the region. Second, African-Americans in the area owned large tracts of land and were basically self-sufficient. This attracted Blacks from other areas who sought employment here. Third, the establishment of a school for African-Americans and the organizational headquarters of church and economic groups helped to make Grambling an important area for Blacks in the region.

AS THE SCHOOL GREW

The growth of the Grambling community paralleled that of the school. Because there were so few schools for African- Americans in the region, the Allen Greene School became the
education center for Blacks in the area. African-American farmers in the region sent their children to Grambling to study at the school that taught basic reading, writing and arithmetic.

In 1905, Adams split with the local farmers and ministers over the philosophical direction of the school. Adams wanted an industrial school patterned after Tuskegee Institute while the ministers preferred an institution grounded in the classics to train ministers. The dispute culminated in a lawsuit, which Adams won. Still, Adams, with the help of Lafayette Richmond, moved the school to its present site, 11/2 miles southeast of the Allen Greene location.

For more than 20 years, two schools operated in Grambling -one run by Charles P. Adams and the other by the local ministers and farmers. Eventually, the farmer / minister group closed its school. The school headed by Adams flourished and eventually received financial support from private donors, the Lincoln Parish school board and the Louisiana legislature.

The area that would eventually be the initially incorporated Grambling developed around Adams' school. Most of those who lived in this new area had moved to Grambling to
work at the university .A larger group of people, however, who comprised the Grambling community and who contributed to its vitality, were from church communities contiguous to the city.

Adams' dream of a school became real, and the dispute with the local ministers and farmers diminished over the years. Many African-Americans moved to the Grambling area so their children could attend school.

"These migrants made up the nucleus of the town of Grambling," wrote Gallot. "Zack Jackson built the first store in 1904, locating it on the north side of the rail- road tracks. Others who lived near Zack in the settlement were the families of Dennis Comwell, L. F. Richmond, George Hall, Dave Williams and Bill Nicholson. The Charles P. Adams family lived on campus."

Grambling was basically a rural area with dirt trails as streets. "Few people, businesses, and roads were found in the town," wrote Gallot. "Grambling itself, was not thought of as a town or even as a village. The population increased as people moved into the area in order to send their children to school and to either work or teach at the school... There was only one road through Grambling -the old Grambling Road from Ruston to Simsboro. This road intersected at the railroad tracks with a dirt road winding south to Highway 80."

During this period of the 1930s, there were about six other businesses in Grambling, a barber and beauty shop, a cafe, three stores selling general/ grocery goods, a pressing shop and a "post office in a small room of an old dilapidated building on the main street," Gallot noted.

The pressing shop was owned by B. T .Woodard, who would later become Grambling's first mayor. according to Martha Bennette Woodard Andrus, Woodard's daughter.

In the book Grambling's First Maxor B. T. Woodard: The Man -The Movement. Andrus noted how her grandfather Elbert had moved the Woodard clan to Grambling from the Mt. Harmony community outside Ruston so the children could go to school. Many families had moved to Grambling like this. This demonstrated the importance of education to African-Americans in the area.

During this period, because of the school, more families began moving into the fledgling village. The school was growing, and in the early 1940's, citizens began to see the need for basic municipal services. Andrus noted that as a result of a community meeting call by Rev. P.L. Harris, the Advisory Council was formed to address the concerns of the local citizens. Members of the council, which met monthly, were Harris, chairman, Woodard, vice chairman, Dr. Earl Lester Cole; Wallace E. Downs and Sylvester Brown. Because of Harris' duties as minister of a local church, Woodard later assumed chairmanship of the council.

This group was responsible for spearheading efforts to get such community conveniences as street lights and sidewalks in the downtown area from the school to the rail period, because of the road tracks, Andrus school, more families wrote.

Both Andrus and Gallot noted the efforts of this council led to the move to become an official municipality, because there were some needs of the settlement (such as utilities) that only an incorporated village could get.

As Woodard and the council worked to get the village incorporated, they ran into another obstacle -there were no registered voters in Grambling. Few Blacks in the area had even voted since the Reconstruction days. There was some local opposition to both incorporation and registering to vote, but that was overcome, according to Andrus.

On September 9, 1953, the village of Grambling became the first all-Black municipality in the state to be officially incorporated.

Woodard was appointed mayor with the following citizens serving on the village council: W. E. Downs, Mike C. Osbome and Sylvester Brown. Earl Maxie was appointed village marshal. The population of this modest village at the time was about 700.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Grambling saw tremendous growth and improvements came at the same time that the university also was growing and being upgraded. There was a building boom in Louisiana at the two state-supported Black colleges -Grambling and Southern, in Baton Rouge. Like other southern states, Louisiana was pouring money into Black schools so "Blacks might decide not to apply for admission to the White colleges in the state," Gallot wrote.

Grambling was officially declared a town in 1959 when the population surpassed 1,400. In the meantime, the c9uncil was busy annexing for growth and developing the town's infrastructure -building utilities, streets and other necessities.

In 1993 when the population surpassed 5,000, Grambling was officially declared a city. Since its incorporation as a village in 1953, Grambling has more than quadrupled in size from the area immediately surrounding the university to one less than a mile from the official city limits of Ruston.

A town is more than a place on a map. A town is more than a set of census bureau statistics. It is more than a location from whence someone came or to where someone is going. It is more than houses and roads and institutions. A town is people-people, human beings, living, working, learning and playing.

Grambling has a noteworthy record of being a people-centered town. The efforts of its leaders in the past were so directed, and all current plans are geared to making and keeping Grambling a good place for people to live.