Series 1. Correspondence 1941-1978

Scope and content:

The correspondence spans Ellison's Virginia Union career from 1941 almost until his death in 1979. It is primarily routine correspondence between Ellison and financial contributors, student and job applicants, foundation officers, organizational representatives, alumni and parents. Much of Ellison's correspondence was directed to donors, large and small, especially while fundraising for the Belgian Building.

Personnel issues, as well as student discipline, are included throughout all of the correspondence. The advent of exchange student enrollment from Africa and the Caribbean is reflected as well. Dr. and Mrs. Ellison were described as having this mission: bringing foreign students to Virginia Union for their post-secondary education. There are social notes as well as letters of introduction, reference and inquiry from and about several such students.

Several letters of interest from prospective teachers provide profiles of aspiring African American professionals during the Jim Crow era. Missives from parents and guardians about their young people away at school for the first time reflect the more comprehensive, paternal role of the African American college administrator of the time. Threads of dialogue between Ellison and concerned fathers can be traced in the correspondence concerning the progress of Simeon Booker, Jr., Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and William H. Gray, Jr. as examples.

Newly appointed presidents and principals of black institutions were his contemporaries; as a network of leaders, they corresponded frequently both professionally and personally about issues facing African Americans at that time. The success or failure of the schools originally founded to educate and uplift the emancipated slaves depended upon their leadership and tenacity. Both male and female administrators were active in this support network as evidenced by correspondence from Nannie Burroughs, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown along with Benjamin Mays, Mordecai Johnson, F. D. Bluford, and Miles W. Connor, all prominent leaders of black educational institutions. Other notable personages among the correspondents are Rev. Vernon Johns, Carter G. Woodson, and Judge William H. Hastie.

Arrangement:

chronological

Physical description:

2500 items

Access and use

Contents