Don Speed Smith Goodloe

From Philosopedia

Don Speed Smith Goodloe (1878 - 1959)

The Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation (1540C Pointer Ridge Place, Bowie, Maryland 20716) is named after Goodloe,

• the first African-American graduate of Meadville Theological School (1906), our Unitarian seminary, which has since become Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago–affiliated with both the University of Chicago and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Goodloe was the first principal–from 1911 to1921–of the Maryland Normal and Industrial School–Maryland's first black post-secondary school, which is now Bowie State University.

The congregation's website includes the following, written by two researchers, Richard Morris and Joseph Herring:

As Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed says in his book, Black Pioneers In A White Denomination, it appears that Rev. Don Goodloe was also one of the black Unitarian ministers who faced "the impossibility of...ministering to a Unitarian church," a fact of life at that time in our historically white denomination. But Goodloe was also interested in education. According to Meadville president Franklin Southworth in 1903, Goodloe hoped, with his wife, to "start a small school composed of carefully selected and choice students, and to run the school along with his Sunday preaching."

From the time he graduated from Meadville in 1906 until 1910, Goodloe was principal of the Danville Industrial Normal School in Danville, Kentucky, and from 1910 until 1911 was vice principal of Manassas (Virginia) Industrial School. Following that, he came to lead the development of the normal school at Bowie.

The reason for the name change–for those of us who have not taken part in our extensive discussions on the topic over the past year–is that we believed our former name was not inclusive enough of people living outside of Bowie. We also wanted a name that honored a prominent local Unitarian Universalist.

In 1916-1917, Goodloe was named to "Who's Who in America" Vol. IX. His house on Maryland Route 197 near Bowie State University is on the National Register of Historic Places. At the Bowie normal school he established dormitories and educational facilities, hired teachers, increasing the faculty from four to ten, established a model elementary school and summer session, and set an admission requirement of completion of a minimum of seventh grade. He sought appropriations from the legislature in Annapolis in competition with white normal schools (for preparing teachers) at Towson and Frostburg.

Other

Wikipedia's entry gives some undocumented material about Goodloe:

He attended Grammar School and Academy of Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, from 1893 to 1898, then was a student at Knoxville College in Knoxville, Tennessee.

According to Who's Who of the Colored Race (Volume 1, 1915, page 117), he was principal of a black public school from 1899 to 1900 at Newport, Tennessee. He and Fannie's first son, Don Burrowes, was born here.

From 1900 to 1901, he was a teacher and principal at Greenville College, a black normal school. When they moved back to Lowell, Kentucky, where he taught from 1901 to 1903, Fannie gave birth to their second son, Wallis>

In 1904, the Goodloes moved to Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he completed his B.A. degree at Allegheny College. He then studied at Meadville Theological School that later became Meadville / Lombard Theological School in Chicago. Goodloe was the first black to attend Meadville, the first to graduate from the school. The REv. Mark Morrison-Reed described him as "a Black Pioneer in a White Denomination." Meadville's president, Franklin Southworth commented that "What the negroes need in [Goodloe's[ judgment more than emotionalism in religion and more even than industrialism in education, is moral teaching and preaching." Goodloe then proposed to start a small school composed of carefully selected and choice students to run the school along with his Sunday preaching.

From 1906 until 1910, after graduating, he became a teacher at Danville Industrial Normal School. In 1910, the Goodloes moved to Manassas, Virginia, where he became vice-principal at Manassas Industrial school.

Also,

• According to his son Wallis, Goodloe was a persuasive speaker. His writing skills are demonstrated in his school catalogs and reports. The 1911-1912 school catalog states, "While the school is like all State Institutions, strictly undenominational and unsectarian, the atmosphere is Christian... and every effort is bent towards influencing and molding their characters to the end that the highest ideals of service to race and country may obtain. D.S.S. Goodloe, Principal." The 1911-1912 school catalog also espouses a philosophy in harmony with that of Booker T. Washington. Goodloe states that “now and perhaps for many years to come agricultural and industrial training are plainly indicated for the Negro by the situation itself...[It is important to teach] the negro boy and girl to love and live successfully the agricultural life...” The Maryland Legislature was controlled by farmers in rural counties who were short on labor and feared that education would draw blacks away from the farm. The catalog emphasized the importance of teaching skills to black students–carpentry, painting, blacksmithing, plastering, papering and shoemaking, and the women domestic science, sewing and millinery work. The school also aimed to prepare African American teachers. The academic curriculum was equal to the ordinary high school course, with English, arithmetic, algebra, history, geography, music, government, physics, botany, and Latin or German. There were six teachers. Mrs. Goodloe taught music.

• In 1911, the school enrolled 58 students: 23 preparatory, 22 first year, 6 second year, and 7 third year. Incoming students had to be at least 15 years old and to have completed “six grades in the best public schools of that state.” Thus, for most of Goodloe’s tenure, the school was the only place in the state for black students to receive an education past the sixth grade level. The first black high school in the state was started in Cambridge in 1917, followed by one in Baltimore, then Annapolis.

• During the first year, the black elementary school at the corner of 11th Street and Normal School Road was placed under the direction of the Normal School, thus giving teachers-in-training a model school for practice with 86 students. At that time, Maryland only provided primary school education to blacks.

• In 1915, Goodloe was honored by inclusion in Who's Who of the Colored Race, which listed essential bibliographical information, including his membership in the Knights of Pythias, a secular fraternal order. Pythians promoted friendship, universal peace, kindness and tolerance, and had rituals based on Greek philosophy of 400 B.C.

• This membership would have been in the African-American Knights of Pythias. Like most fraternal orders, the Pythians admitted no blacks. This led blacks to establish the African-American Knights of Pythias and parallel versions of other orders (e.g., Masons and Odd Fellows). In 1906, when the white fraternal orders attempted to force the black counterparts out of existence, the black Pythians, 300,000 strong nationally, raised money, sued the white Pythians, and litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1912 ruled in their favor, agreeing that too much time had passed (40 years?) for the white order to retain exclusive use of its name and ritual. The case was the forerunner of NAACP lawsuits using the Supreme Court to overrule state courts, including Brown vs. Board of Education.

• Also in 1915 the Goodloes decided to build a house for themselves. They hired John Moore, a black architect, and black workers built it. Lumber for the framing was cut, and bricks for the veneer, were made on the property. It was completed in 1916. In 1988, the Don S. S. Goodloe House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1916, Goodloe was included in Who’s Who in America.

• In 1917, household chemistry, farm physics, and practice school work were introduced. The terms household chemistry and farm physics may have been added to satisfy the farmers who controlled politics in Annapolis.

• In the fall of 1918 student enrollment declined sharply to 36 students as a result of World War I, the national outbreak of influenza, and the high cost of living. In 1919, it bounced back up to 69 students, and faculty was increased from 7 to 10. Goodloe established the first summer session for the school in 1920.

• In 1920, the secretary of the Maryland State Colored Teachers’ Association sent Dr. D.S.S. Goodloe, a letter of commendation “for the constant and progressive fight he has made toward enriching of the curriculum and the uplifting of the standards of the Bowie State Normal School.”

• During his tenure in Bowie, from 1911 until 1921, Don Speed Smith Goodloe established a faculty of ten members, student enrollment of 80, an admission requirement of completion of seventh grade, a model school for student teachers at Horsepen Hill School–the first school for black children in Bowie–a summer session, a new dormitory for women, and renovation of living quarters for men. One additional year was added to the course, which led to a second grade certificate and the opportunity for students to do two year’s additional work to earn a first grade certificate. He made many pleas for additional funding before the legislature in Annapolis, which might have brought more rapid development to the school, but the state seemed to favor the white normal schools in its appropriations.

• Little is known about why Goodloe resigned his post at the age of 43 in 1921. Goodloe told a friend of his in Washington that he resigned because he was just tired of being principal. It is possible that he was tired of the inability to gain sufficient funding, to expand into more industrial training courses, and to upgrade the normal school to the standard curriculum used at Towson and Frostburg. Perhaps he was tired of dealing with the segregation, inequality and the continued racism of the times and wished to immerse himself in the black community. The Ku Klux Klan was reviving in the South. There were 64 lynchings in the U.S. in 1918 and 83 in 1919. There were at least fourteen in Maryland in the twenty years before Goodloe arrived and two during his tenure here. Black soldiers returning from the war met the brutal face of white supremacy. Race riots in Chicago killed 38 people. Perhaps Goodloe gave up on Booker T. Washington’s dream of gaining equality with whites through hard work and patience. Perhaps he acted too “white” for the powers in Annapolis.

• Goodloe’s liberal religion also may have been a cause of conflict at the school. His successor as Principal, Leonidas S. James, according to his daughter, considered it “very important to be guided by sound philosophy in an environment that was sprinkled with many Christian liberals.” His daughter may have been referring to Goodloe.

• After leaving the school, Goodloe moved to Baltimore, where a directory of black businesses listed him as President of Standard Benefit Society in 1923-24. Other records show him owning rental housing in Baltimore. Later he moved to Washington, and is said to have owned extensive property in the District. In 1924, he testified in Congress on behalf of a bill creating an inter-racial commission. Fannie and two of their sons, Wallis and Donald B. continued to live in the two-story house on Jericho Park Road. Both sons graduated from Howard University, became teachers in Baltimore, and later in Washington. Donald B. Goodloe taught at Dunbar High School. In 1949, at the age of 71, Goodloe divorced Fannie and remarried. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1959. Although we have no record of Goodloe's religious affiliation after Meadville, we do know that one of his sons, Donald B. Goodloe, was a teacher and active member at All Souls Church, Unitarian who caught the train from Bowie to D.C. to attend service. This son lived in the Goodloe house in Bowie until his death.

In 2005 the Unitarian Universalist congregation located in Bowie, Maryland, changed its name from the Bowie Unitarian Universalist Fellowship to the Goodloe Memorial Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

About

Bowie State University Fact Book, 2002

Meyer, Eugene "Reviving the Memory of an Obscure Educator," Washington Post February 27, 1987

Morrison-Reed, Mark, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, Skinner House Books, Unitarian Universalist Association

Entire book about Egbert Ethelred Brown, Lewis A. McGee, and Afro-American Unitarian Universalists is online. Copyright 1980, 1984, 1994. Introduction by Andrew J. Young, copyright 1984 by Beacon Press. Young tells about meeting David Eaton in 1976 at the All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, D.C., the first Unitarian minister he had ever met. Contains in Chapter 2, "A Dream Aborted: Egbert Ethelred Brown in Jamaica and Harlem," with references to Joseph H. Jordan (1842-1901); Joseph Fletcher Jordan (1863-1929); Benjamin Rush who helped found the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1790; the difficulty Jamaica-born Brown had in getting into Meadville - it took three attempts before he was permitted in 1910 to be a special student; Alfred Amos Williams, the first who was enrolled at Meadville in 1870; and how in 1903 Don Speed Smith Goodloe was enrolled, the hope being "that Goodloe would consent to mission work among his people."

National Register of Historic Places: Properties in Prince Georges County, Don S.S. Goodloe House

Putney, Martha S. "The Baltimore Normal School for the Education of Colored Teachers: Its Founders and Its Founding," Maryland Historical Magazine, Vol. 72, No. 2 Summer 1977

Who's Who of the Colored Race, Vol. 1, 1915, p.117, digitalized by Google

Who's Who in America, Vol. IX 1916-1917