Prentiss Institute

Remembrance of Days Past: The Prentiss Institute at 100

By Jaman Matthews, Heifer Staff Writer

Prentiss, Mississippi — Lulla Myers sits at the long table wearing the beatific expression of a widow indulging in memories of a wonderful but now long distant marriage. She recalls that first meeting in a train station in 1955, when the whole world seemed to converge and shine on them. The excitement and giddiness of the early years—the gifts and letters—and the many years of comfortable peace and collaboration that followed. The union was made more difficult by the racial segregation of Mississippi at the time, but together they were pioneers and activists, a marriage of true minds. She doesn’t talk about the end; she just motions behind her to the gaping holes covered with cardboard and says, “Somebody keeps busting out the windows.”

She is speaking, not about her own marriage (though she is now a widow), but a very different sort of union: that between the Prentiss Institute and Heifer International, two independent organizations both committed in their own way to education and social justice.

Myers is the president of the Prentiss Institute board of directors, the only remaining functioning body of the school in south Mississippi. We are in the Prentiss Institute library, one of the few buildings left on campus that is still in use. The dorms and classroom buildings have long since succumbed to the combined effects of disuse and the elements. But even in the library, time and inertia are taking their toll. Metal shelves stand in rows against two walls, sagging with old, unused books that give the whole room a musty smell. Many of the shelves are draped with plastic sheets to keep the books dry. But even here among this decay and dissolution, she envisions a return to better days for the institute.

In the languid summer of 1955, a young man was lynched near Money, Miss. Emmitt Till whistled at a white woman. It was a crime because this was Mississippi and Till was black. It became the news story that defined an era and, subsequently, the nation’s perception of its poorest state. But that same year, and 200 miles further south in the town of Prentiss, Miss., another groundbreaking event took place, covered only by the local newspapers. An article by State Times staff writer George Harmon on Christmas Day 1955, reported that “Prentiss Institute, a 48-year-old private junior college and vocational school, received 15 pure-bred heifers last week for distribution to families who want to diversify their farm income but are not financially able to do so.”

Heifer Project (later renamed Heifer International) had formed a relationship with the African-American school in segregated Mississippi and had sent them livestock in June 1955. This would be one of Heifer’s first full-fledged projects in the United States. As unusual as this may have been for the times, it was what the recipients at the Prentiss Institute did next that was truly radical. When the second shipment of heifers arrived in Prentiss, according to the news report, “the Institute asked white farm leaders in Jeff Davis County to help them donate some of the animals to white families.”

But now, a half-century after that first collaboration with Heifer International, the Prentiss Institute is struggling against extinction, working to find a way to continue its work in this community and be remembered into the future.

Prentiss is the county seat of Jefferson Davis County, whose namesake was the president of the Confederacy. Carved out of surrounding counties, Jefferson Davis County came into being in 1906. One year later, the Prentiss Institute opened its doors. Founded by J. E. Johnson and his wife, Bertha LaBranche Johnson—Mr. Johnson graduated valedictorian from Alcorn A&M College, while Mrs. Johnson studied under Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee Institute—the school was an offspring of the Tuskegee Institute, “emphasizing the training of the head, heart and hand.”

The young couple borrowed money to buy 40 acres that, at the time, lay just outside the city of Prentiss. The land included a log cabin that had had several previous incarnations—as an early homestead, perhaps as an inn and tavern along an early road that led from the river town of Natchez east into Alabama. There were still remnants of slave quarters in the rear.

Once the Johnsons had the cabin readied for school, they faced the daunting challenge of convincing parents in the rural areas to send their children. In the early days, the population of Prentiss was only 200. According to a newspaper story, Mrs. Johnson recalls, “We had to go out into the country and beg the parents to let us teach their children.” They began with 40 students who paid for their education with the only commodities their families had—eggs, chickens, produce and the like.

Mrs. Myers recalls an incident from her days as a student at Prentiss. One girl from an especially poor family had no money to pay tuition. All they had was one old rooster, not good as an egg-layer and too tough to eat. The young girl proudly carried that rooster all the way to school and presented it upon arrival. No one said a word about the insufficient payment. That night, the students ate rooster soup.

The African-American school struggled for many years in south Mississippi, but it filled an increasing need in the area. When the Johnsons began the school, it covered only the elementary grades, but over the years it grew. By the time Dr. Johnson passed away in 1953, Prentiss Institute—by then the Prentiss Normal and Industrial Institute—included a high school and junior college with an enrollment of more than 700 students and a faculty of 44. The campus also grew, from those original 40 acres to 500 acres of pasture, farmland and forest, and from one building to 24.

Onette Johnson, son of the founders, was a lawyer in Chicago in the 1950s and minor official at Prentiss Institute. On a train bound for Chicago, he happened upon a Church of the Brethren pamphlet. As he read about Heifer Project, he recognized potential for people, not halfway around the world, but in his home state of Mississippi. So Onette Johnson took the idea to his mother, Bertha Johnson, who had assumed control of Prentiss Institute upon the passing of her husband.

This story of how Heifer Project came to be involved with Prentiss Institute has many variations. The one above seems to be the most historically accurate. But there are others. In some, it was J. E. Johnson, the institute’s founder and president, who was returning from a business trip. In the train station, he overheard a conversation about the Heifer Project from a group of supporters. In other accounts, it was not a group of supporters in the train station, but one man: Thurl Metzger, executive director of Heifer Project. Johnson approached Metzger, and the two great humanitarians developed a relationship which grew from there.

Though there are several versions of the star-crossed meeting, the exact identities of the actors are not necessarily important. The meeting has been mythologized and has become more important as a symbol than as an actual historical event. Like the first meeting of lovers, the story is a vehicle of more than merely historical information; it carries meaning for all that transpired afterwards. Prentiss Institute was, it seemed, fated to partner with Heifer Project. The two are joined by unexplainable bonds. And so in 1955, with the first shipment of cows, the two organizations entered into a relationship that would span the next three decades. The archives contain correspondences between the two organizations that trace a healthy and adventurous relationship during these years. There were numerous shipments of cows, and later there were chicken projects.

The relationship between Heifer Project and Prentiss Institute influenced others, most notably Dorothy Height, the educator and civil rights activist. In her 2003 memoir, Open Wide the Freedom Gates, Height talks about Heifer’s involvement at the Prentiss Institute as the inspiration for her own initiative: the “pig bank.”

“Participating families were trained to care for pigs, to establish cooperatives, and to work together to improve the community’s nutrition and health. Each participating family signed a ‘pig agreement,’ promising not to sell the pigs and to bring back two piglets from each litter to deposit in the bank. That way more and more families could receive pigs over time.”

Height’s plan bears a striking resemblance to Heifer’s livestock program and, in her memoir, she talks of seeking advice from an Iowa farmer. During this time, Heifer employed several farmers—and a number of volunteers as well—whose responsibility it was to oversee the distribution and care of the livestock as well as related educational programs at the school. Though there were several, it was the Eashes who stand out in most people’s memories. (Even today, a man at the public library recognized the name, Heifer International. “They give hogs and black angus cows to people,” he recalled after a mulling over the name, and then quickly added, “I remember Mr. Eash.” Everyone, it seems, remembers the Eashes.)

The Eashes came from a farm in Iowa and served for 10 years in Mississippi. Under the direction of Wallace Eash, the program grew to include more than 300 head of cattle distributed in four counties. At the end of their sojourn, Laura Eash said, “We didn’t know just where we were going at first but when we learned it was Mississippi, I didn’t want to go. Now that we have been here over these 10 years, working among people like you, I wouldn’t return to Iowa if it was given to me.” The Eashes did in fact remain in Mississippi after their service to Heifer ended.

Thurl Metzger, former Heifer executive director was involved in the project at Prentiss Institute from its inception, visiting the campus many times. Speaking of the project in his book The Road to Development, Metzger recalled, “Heifer Project was involved in a small part of the struggle for equal opportunity. We were there before the civil rights legislation, and we witnessed the violence that followed the Supreme Court decision requiring equal education.”

Ironically, it may have been school integration that led to the decline and eventual closure of Prentiss Institute. The Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, ending school segregation and striking down the so-called “separate but equal” doctrine. The state of Mississippi balked, effectively maintaining educational segregation until the courts finally handed down another ruling in 1969 forcing an end to the dual system. The public schools in Mississippi were successfully, if begrudgingly, integrated, and enrollment at all-black schools like the Prentiss Institute dwindled.

As numbers at the school dwindled, so too did participation in Heifer-related programs. To complicate matters further, by the early 1980s, Wallace Eash was in declining health. Prentiss Institute struggled on a few more years before closing its doors in 1989 and ceasing to function as an educational institution. The remnants of the institute’s board are now seated around this table. Mrs. Meyers is the president. There is also Mrs. Rosie Hooker and Mr. Luther Alexander. But they too are aging and, like the institute, are slipping into history. Their one remaining task, which they take very seriously, is to navigate a viable future for the institution.

In a corner of the school’s property, between the creek and the road, sits one inconspicuous quadrangle of land that is still well maintained. Not even an acre, it is surrounded by a six-foot chainlink fence topped with three strands of barbed wire. The gate is chained and padlocked. Inside the fence is a mowed lawn and, to the left, a brilliant white headstone marking the burial place of the school’s founders, Dr. Jonas Edward and Mrs. Bertha LaBranche Johnson The inscription reads: “Lives dedicated to unselfish service to their fellow man.”

A cobbled walkway leads over a slight knoll toward the rustic house that sits at the back of the property. The house still resembles a log cabin, but has been added onto and painted battleship gray. The bright tin roof extends low over the deep front porch, leaving it in deep shadow. This was the original schoolhouse.

It takes half a minute for your eyes to adjust to the dim light inside, and when they do, it feels as if you have stepped bodily into the past. The floors are rough-sawn wooden planks 15 inches wide. The mid-summer air is still and thick. You try to imagine what it must have been like for students in those early years. Uncomfortably hot in summer; in winter, cold except for a small area near the pot-bellied stove.

But any speculation must be left to the imagination, for there are precious few artifacts here: an old piano, a few tools and books. Pushed back against the walls are several glass display cases, some with photographs and memorabilia from the school’s past, others stacked with books and albums waiting to be curated. These half-filled glass cases contain remnants of Prentiss Institute’s past, but also carry the future hope of the school. It is the board’s plan, explains Mrs. Myers, that this will one day soon be a museum. It will trace the history of the school and preserve its legacy. They hope to have the museum open by July 2007 for the school’s centennial celebration.

Moving from case to case, yellowing newspaper clippings and photographs of forgotten faces struggle against the fading effects of passing time to tell the story of this once-great institution. And there, in one scrapbook, are photographs from the Heifer Project. There is nothing particularly special about them, like photos from a family album. But they recall the many years of a good and rewarding relationship.