Part of History

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Can you identify this century old artifact from the CCHS collection?

It’s one of the objects I asked nine year old students to think about during this year’s Summer Cohesion Program from the Chemung County Youth Bureau. CCHS has participated in this program for several years, and though it had to go strictly online in summer of 2020, instead of bringing students to the museum, the Summer Cohesion staff were determined to carry on. We were proud to be involved, and we congratulate the program staff on receiving the Program of Merit Award by the Genesee Valley Recreation & Parks Society, and the Program of Merit by the New York State Recreation & Park Society.

Thankfully, this year’s visits resumed in person. However, instead of field trips out in the community, students stayed put and we visited them. To do this, I created a portable museum complete with artifacts, and an activity.

Sitting in a circle, the students put on curator’s gloves and passed around the mystery artifact. Its function isn’t obvious, and I asked them to share what they noticed about it. I wanted them to comment on things like the object's size, texture, weight, and materials - not what they thought it was. This exercise helps them look a little longer and avoid making conclusions or assumptions about an object. In the end, all the students were surprised when I revealed that the object was placed in a fire to absorb heat and used to keep people’s beds warm in the wintertime.

Then I shared another artifact - a diary written in the fall of 1918 by Clara Gilbert, a fourteen-year-old girl from Elmira.

Students talked about what a diary is and why people might keep a journal or diary.

If you follow our blogs, you’ll know in March 2020, when COVID-19 first started to shut down schools and businesses, our archivist shared some of Clara Gilbert’s diary entries in a post titled The First Quarantine. Clara writes about her school being closed, events cancelled, and having to stay home. She shares her excitement about school cancellation, then her boredom at home, then the strangeness of returning to school at last. Students talked about how Clara described much that was familiar to them, while other aspects of the time were very different.

Each student then received their own diary to keep and the students broke up into groups to interview each other. The idea was to come up with questions Clara might ask if she time-traveled to 2021. What would seem familiar to her and what would seem different. Students recorded their questions and answers to each other on small voice recorders which we purchased from a QuickArts grant for this project. (Parents gave us permission ahead of time to save student answers and images.)

Some students were surprised that someone from a century ago went through experiences similar to theirs. When they talked about their own experiences with the pandemic, many talked about how hard it was to wear masks. Some mentioned how much they missed their best friends and teachers when school went online. Others mentioned how their computers kept breaking which made learning online even harder for them. Some talked about how they got to play with their sister, brother or best friend.

My hope is that these students gained an inkling of their own place in history, although that isn’t something a nine-year-old is likely to articulate. I was delighted, though, that one student said she enjoyed the history program because through it she got to know her classmates better.

Education in Pandemic Times

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

Lately I’ve been asked what’s going on in Education this year since current pandemic conditions have affected everything. I usually get busy in January when the first of my 120 classroom visits to Elmira City School District (ECSD) elementary schools begin.

History in the classroom, January 2020

In many ways I’m busier than before. This year schools are operating on a hybrid model with those that want to be back in the classroom attending either Monday and Tuesday, or Thursday and Friday. All students are virtual on Wednesday while they clean the buildings. Not able to accommodate 240 class visits, and knowing schools were restricting outside visitors, it was time for plan “B.”

Briefly, this beloved program has been operating for more than five years, established well before my time here. In those years, the program has easily reached close to 14,000 students. Frequently parents chaperoning school groups, mention they remember visiting the museum when they were students. Teachers tell me how much they enjoy the Chemung County Historical Society’s visits, and hugs are often how many second-grade students share what a field trip to the museum in June means to them.

The program is designed to support teachers and share local history with students. By the time ECSD students leave their K-2 schools, they’ve had six visits by a history educator: two in kindergarten, one in first grade, and three in second grade. We cover the Haudenosaunee, Colonial Life, the beginning of the United States, Westward Expansion, the Civil War, and Immigration. Second graders visit the museum with their classes in June.

Sharing age-appropriate information on serious topics can be challenging but helping kids see that history is dynamic, sets the groundwork for students to learn about themselves and understand that history is not just a bunch of boring dates.

Students hear local stories, handle objects from the museum and in doing so learn about themselves and their communities. Being able to handle artifacts like a cannonball or cow horn rattle helps bring history alive.

Classroom visits last about 40 minutes long. Students hear a brief presentation and put on curator gloves to handle objects from the museum. Imagine being a first grader and holding a real cannonball. The class sits in a circle and carefully passes a medium-sized cannonball around, students are asked to share one thing they notice about the object: maybe its size, weight, color, smell, or texture. All comments are taken seriously, and what six- or seven-year-olds notice range from the silly to the sublime. It’s a great way for students to discover and explore objects while making connections with what they’ve been learning.

Kindergarteners, January 2020

Aware how different their school days have been this year, adapting to Plan B meant many of the artifacts the students usually handle and explore have been installed in locked display cases at each school. While missing the whole experience of putting on curator gloves to learn more about these objects, students and teachers can still see the objects this year.

School Display of Colonial objects

In place of class visits, I’ve been making short movies for each of the six topics. Our director secured grant money for the museum to invest in new audio-visual equipment and I’ve learned how to create short movies for the teachers to use in the classroom or share with students working remotely. Each history movie has ended up being close to 12 minutes long, covering the topic I usually present in class. One advantage of this format is flexibility. They can watch it over and over or teachers can pause it to ask or answer questions. One disadvantage, as many of us have discovered, is this is a sterile way of teaching lacking the feedback and enthusiasm of an audience. I’m really looking forward to being back in the classrooms next year. While each of the movies seems better than the last one, I have no delusions of Hollywood calling.

online

To go along with each lesson, I’ve designed and put together individual activity bags teachers can distribute to their students. While not as exciting as being able to handle real objects, at least there’s a hands-on part to create something connected to each topic. 

For the Civil War unit, second graders got a bag with a needle, thread, button and piece of felt. Just as soldiers learned to sew, ECSD second graders had the chance to learn this skill too.

425 Civil War Activity bags

As I write this, I’m half-way through these sessions. Only three topic movies left and 1,200 activity bags to go. We don’t know yet if any of the 500 students will be visiting in June. If you know of any students in ECSD kindergarten through second grade classes bring them down to discover the museum and maybe they can share a thing or two.

 

The Neighborhood House and EOP

by Erin Doane, curator 

The Neighborhood House, 1925

In 1878, the Ladies Temperance and Benevolent Union of Elmira started the Industrial School “to help the poor to help themselves.” There, women and girls learned to sew. They then sold what they made to earn an income. The school also hosted weekly meetings with Bible lessons.

Industrial School, c. 1900

The school began in rooms on the corner of Lake and Carroll Streets. By the 1920s, it had grown into a complex that occupied the entire block of East Fifth Street from Dickinson to Baldwin Streets. It had also been officially renamed the Neighborhood House. The organization was strictly non-sectarian and was open to all regardless of race, creed, culture, or national origin. It provided job training and classes for adults and offered athletic and craft activities for children.

Children at the Neighborhood House, 1930s
(photo courtesy of EOP)

During the middle of the 20^th century, the Neighborhood House became a center of information, counseling, vocational guidance, and recreation for the community. It sponsored basketball teams and other group sports. The building had two gymnasiums and in the 1950s, the smaller gym was used for dances and roller skating on the weekends.

Roller skating at the Neighborhood House, 1950s

In the 1960s, as the African American community was embroiled in the fight for equal rights, the Neighborhood House took on a more active role in advocating for social justice. A new philosophical approach known as “New Directions” was adopted that focused on striving to eliminate all forms of racism and solving community problems rather than simply providing neighborhood services. In November 1971, the Neighborhood House moved into a newly-built facility at East Fifth and Lake Streets.

Neighborhood House Girl Scout troop, 1950s
(photo courtesy of EOP)

In the 1980s, rising inflation and a weakening economy strained the Neighborhood House’s finances. The organization refocused its attention on two areas: human services and youth services. It provided drug education and drug counseling, computer courses, and sports programs. Despite efforts to rebuild membership numbers, raise funds, and develop new programs to serve the community, the Neighborhood House was forced to close on January 16, 1987. Three years later, in 1990, it reopened as the Ernie Davis Community Center. The center’s work focused on recreational and educational programs for children.

Carole Coleman instructing Natalie Jones in basic
computer techniques at the Neighborhood House,
Star-Gazette, April 21, 1981, photo by Jeff Richards

The Equal Opportunity Program or EOP stared in 1965 with the mission to eliminate poverty. Its early focus was on issues advocacy, including welfare and housing rights. After a few years, it shifted its approach to directly helping underprivileged individuals. It offered daycare and Head Start, alcohol rehabilitation, home weatherization programs, nutrition education, and home heating emergency assistance programs. While it suffered through a financial crunch in the 1980s when community organizations were forced to compete for limited funding, by the mid-1990s EOP had grown to an organization with a budget of $5.6 million that served approximately 10,000 people a year.

Economic Opportunity Program, Inc. of
Chemung and Schuyler Counties, 2019

In 1996, EOP, the Ernie Davis Community Center, and the Eastside Community Center merged under the EOP name. The organization continued operating out of the Lagonegro Building at 318 Madison Avenue until 2002, when the new Ernie Davis Family Center opened on Baldwin Street. Today, the Economic Opportunity Program, Inc. of Chemung and Schuyler Counties continues to operate as a community action organization dedicated to helping the people of the Southern Tier.

Did you want to learn more about what EOP is doing now and see more old photos from the Neighborhood House? Visit https://www.cseop.org/ and https://www.cseop.org/neighborhood-house.

 

More to the Story

by Susan Zehnder, Education Director

We have a photograph in our Bank Gallery showing two young Elmira men. George Brooks is seated on the left, and his younger brother Edward is on the right. At the bottom of the photo is a handwritten note that both graduated in 1886. Our museum label says that Edward Ulysses Anderson Brooks, the younger brother, is considered the first African American to graduate from Cornell University. Impressive, but there’s more to his story.

  

Brooks brothers George F. and Edward U.A.

In the late 1860s, the Brooks family left Washington D.C. Born into slavery, the Brooks parents were part of a new wave of hopeful black settlers relocating north to offer their children better lives. When they arrived in Elmira, the family consisted of four people: husband George, his wife Fanny, their daughter Nancy and son George F., the older brother seen in the photograph. 

The family first lived in a boarding house on Dickinson Street, then moved to a house on Clinton Street where they continued to live for many years. Mrs. Brooks contributed to the family income by offering laundry services out of their home. Mr. Brooks, when he could find employment, worked in nearby factories, or for construction companies doing physical labor. In 1872, their second son Edward was born. The couple eventually had eight other children, but we only have evidence that George and Edward survived.

It’s hard to say exactly when the photo was taken. One clue is what Edward was wearing. In the early 1880s, boys commonly wore shorts like these until eight or nine years old. This suggests the handwritten note refers to Edward’s graduation from primary school, at nine. When Edward was fifteen, his father died. George Brooks, aged 54 years old, was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in December 1887. Edward continued his schooling and graduated from Elmira Free Academy two years after his father died.

Edward U.A. Brooks, E.F.A. graduate 1889

In 1890, he won a competitive scholarship to attend nearby Cornell University. With that, Edward became one of a handful of African American Cornellians, among an enrollment of over four hundred students.

Cornell was founded in 1865 to offer students, regardless of religion or race, a coeducational, non-sectarian education. Unlike many universities, it meant Cornell would admit women and people of color. In practice, there were actually few women or students of color at that time. Records show it took eight years before the first woman graduated from Cornell, and five years after that for the first male black Cuban student to graduate. Edward is credited with being the University’s first African American graduate. This was an achievement he earned in just two years. Records identify five African American students attending or graduating from Cornell between the years 1889 and 1892. Who knows what their true college experience was like, they must have had more than Ithaca's steep hills to navigate. However in 1892, Edward completed his undergraduate studies and two years later earned his Master’s in law.

As a law student, Edward U.A. Brooks was one of Cornell’s early graduates. The law college had joined the university in 1887, twenty-two years after the university was founded. Edward was active on campus. He served as a judge for Cornell’s Moot Court to evaluate his fellow law students; was a member of Cornell’s cadet band; founded the Literary Union Club, a club to appeal to ‘young colored people’ in Ithaca; and was a member of the AME Zion church in town. He was an invited honorary member of Alpha Phi Alpha, a prestigious African American Fraternity which originated at Cornell. Today APA has chapters on campuses all around the nation and promotes African American leadership in a variety of fields.

After graduation, Edward returned to Elmira. He set up law practice on Lake Street and also filled in as substitute pastor for the AME Zion church’s Hope Chapel in Utica, NY. Established in 1848 as a place of worship and Sunday school for children, Hope Chapel was the only house of worship in the Utica area open to people of color.

Hope Chapel, Utica, NY

By 1896, Edward's name and law practice aren’t listed in Elmira's City Directory anymore. His life seems to have taken another direction. He returned to Hope Chapel, appointed pastor, and ministered there for the next seven years. During this time, he also earned a theological degree from Auburn Theological Seminary, in Auburn, New York. He moved to Auburn in 1911 to be the AME Zion church's pastor. In this capacity, he was also director of the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, an institution Harriet Tubman had set up to care for aging and indigent colored people. When Harriet Tubman was ninety years old, she became a resident herself. Reverend Brooks wrote to Booker T. Washington looking to raise the $10.00 it cost per week to provide care for ‘Auntie Harriet” in her final days.

Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged

Sometime before 1918, Edward married and took on leadership of the AME Zion church in Saratoga Springs. In 1921 he and a Mrs. Reverend E.U.A. Brooks are listed as charter members of the Saratoga Springs NAACP chapter. By 1923 they returned to Hope Chapel in Utica. He stayed and ministered there for another twenty three years, retiring at the age of seventy-five. 

His legacy includes his financial skills which saved the struggling Hope Chapel, and his advocacy for better housing, especially for African Americans. These were times when many were often barred from renting or owning their own homes. He stepped up to provide food, housing and clothes for folks arriving from the south, who often landed in Utica without adequate winter clothing. And, he officiated at over half-a-dozen mixed marriages, then illegal in twenty nine other states.

Reverend Edward U.A. Brooks died in 1954 at the age of eighty two, and was buried in Utica.

Our photograph shows a very serious looking young man of nine. Uncovering part of his story tells us so much more about his life, and is one reason why we are collecting our area’s Oral Histories.