Who Was My Mother Before She Was My Mom?

Who Would You Like to Meet? — Episode 2: The Teacher

The Destination

My mother attended Cheyney Training School for Teachers, the institution now known as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

Cheyney, established in 1837, is recognized as the nation's oldest Historically Black College or University (HBCU). By the time my mother attended, preparing African Americans for careers in education had become central to the school's mission.

When my mother arrived at Cheyney, she entered a growing college. In September 1949, a local newspaper reported that Cheyney had begun the academic year with the largest enrollment in its history. President Leslie Pinckney Hill was especially optimistic about elementary education—Cheyney's specialty—because the nation faced an enormous shortage of elementary school teachers.

A year later, Cheyney broke its enrollment record again, welcoming 384 students for the 1950–51 school year.

My mother prepared to become a teacher during a period of high demand for teachers.

When I began researching my mother's time at Cheyney, I aimed to discover more than just details about the institution.

As a genealogist, I wanted to learn who was there.

So, I did what genealogists do. I went to the census records.

And there she was. Geraldine Jackson. Age 20. Student.

Finding her name immediately changed how I viewed the census and led to another discovery about the census process.

Those weren't just names surrounding my mother on a page. That was her world.

I began going through the 1950 census sheets for Cheyney, student by student. Eventually, I identified about 209 students enumerated as residing at the college that spring.

The census wasn't a complete enrollment list. In fact, by September 1950, Cheyney reported a record 384 students enrolled for the 1950–51 school year.

But those census pages gave me something an enrollment statistic couldn't. They gave me names. And those names began to reveal the community surrounding my mother.

That made me wonder about something the census can't answer.

What did Cheyney feel like in 1950?

Could You Tell Where Someone Was From?

Over 30 years later, when I attended Cheyney, you could often tell people's origins.

Philly.

New York.

Jersey.

Baltimore.

D.C.

Sometimes it was how they talked. Sometimes it was how they dressed. Sometimes it was simply the way they carried themselves.

We were all Black college students attending the same university, but we didn't arrive with identical experiences or cultures.

And Cheyney apparently encouraged its students to look beyond even those differences. In November 1949, while my mother was a student, a local newspaper described the school's efforts to promote “intercultural understanding.” Cheyney reportedly drew students from Pennsylvania, multiple states, and the Virgin Islands, and the school accepted all.

So Geraldine's Cheyney experience may have been broader than I first imagined.

I wonder whether my mother experienced something similar to my own.

None of that information comes from the census.

It shows me that those people were there, which makes me curious and starts another research project. I'm now tracing a cross-section of those 1950 Cheyney students backward to 1940 and forward through their lives.

I went looking for my mother, but may have found a community.

But that's another story.

Today, I'm looking for Geraldine.

The FAN Club

Genealogists sometimes use something called the FAN principle—researching a person's Friends, Associates, and Neighbors.

That's especially useful when you're trying to understand someone's life rather than simply collecting their dates.

One of the young women in Geraldine's Cheyney world was Jeanette Scott.

In 1950, Jeanette was 18 and was also born in Pennsylvania.

She remained one of my mother's close friends for decades and eventually became Jeanette Gillison. She also devoted her professional life to education, teaching for approximately 50 years.

Think about that for a moment.

When I look at the census today, I see two young women:

Geraldine Jackson, 20.

Jeanette Scott, 18.

Neither could predict where the following years would take them.

I do.

That's one of the strange gifts genealogy gives us.

Sometimes we can see both the beginning and the end simultaneously.

That modest campus also had other intriguing people walking around. Some were younger. Some were older. Some came from places distant from Geraldine’s world.

But I'm deliberately stopping myself here.

Because this trip isn't about everyone at Cheyney.

It's about Mom.

Before She Was Mrs. Driver

The photo I selected for this blog is Geraldine on her graduation day.

This is one of my favorite photographs of my mother.

Now, I need to avoid imagining my mother when I look at this photo of her as a young college graduate. That's harder than it sounds; she is my mom.

I want to see someone else: Geraldine Jackson.

A young woman.

A daughter.

A friend.

A college student.

A woman deciding which path to take in her life.

Before Earl Driver.

Before Earl Jr.

Before Wayne.

Before PTA meetings, lesson plans, report cards, faculty meetings, and all the responsibilities that would eventually come with being a teacher, wife, and mother.

What was she dreaming about?

Was college intimidating?

Was she excited?

Did she already know exactly what kind of teacher she wanted to become?

Was there a teacher somewhere in Philadelphia who had changed her life?

Or was teaching simply an extension of something I would later recognize in her myself—her compassion and desire to help others?

I don't know.

Precisely for that reason, I want to meet her.

Mom, What Made You Want to Teach?

If my time machine allowed me to sit with Geraldine for an afternoon, I'd have a lot of questions.

● Why Cheyney?

● Why education?

● Who encouraged you to go to college?

● What did Grandma Josephine think?

● What was your favorite class?

● Who was your favorite professor?

● What fun activities did you, Jeanette, and others enjoy?

● How did you regard the other students?

● How did you imagine your life ten years later?

But after all those questions, I think I'd ask something much simpler.

How did it feel to be you at 20?

Because that's something children rarely think to ask their parents.

We meet our parents somewhere in the middle of their stories.

By the time I arrived, Geraldine had already been Geraldine for 30 years. I would share my life with her for just 27 additional years.

There stood a whole woman I never had the chance to meet.

The Beginning

Genealogy recently gave me another piece of her story.

For years, I remembered that my mother's early teaching career had some connection to Coatesville, Pennsylvania. I wasn't sure whether she had student-taught there or whether the connection came through family friends.

Then I rediscovered an email from a man I called Uncle Jimmy (Dr. James E. Barksdale) that was sent to me in 2013.

I had asked Uncle Jimmy a genealogist's question:

How did you and Aunt Agnes (Dr. Agnes White Barksdale) become friends with my parents?

His answer included something I hadn't known.

He told me that my mother's first teaching job was at James Adams School in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

That one sentence changed the story.

At last, I understood the young woman from the Cheyney census's next destination.

Into a classroom.

Miss Jackson's First Classroom

James Adams wasn't simply another school.

It served Coatesville's African American community during an era of segregated education.

So sometime after her years at Cheyney, my mother walked through the doors of James Adams School not as Geraldine Jackson, the college student—but as Miss Jackson, the teacher.

I wish I could see that day.

What did she wear?

Did she arrive early?

Was she nervous?

Did she struggle to sleep the previous night?

Did she stand outside her classroom for a moment before opening the door?

When she walked in, what did those children notice?

They couldn't have realized they were witnessing the start of someone's career.

Neither could she.

One thing I've learned through genealogy is that ordinary moments become historic only because we eventually learn what came after them.

For Geraldine, this was the beginning.

The Teachers Who Became Family

Uncle Jimmy's email gave me something else.

It helped explain where the people who shaped my childhood came from.

There was Esther Vause, whose first teaching job was also at James Adams. Esther had been a college classmate and best friend of my Aunt Agnes at West Chester State College.

Louise Johnson, another West Chester connection, was someone Uncle Jimmy remembered teaching in Coatesville at the same time as my mother. She later became Louise Whitmore.

Eventually, Esther taught in Philadelphia and stayed with Jimmy and Agnes at their new home on Island Road in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Esther knew my mother.

My parents were living on Greenway Avenue in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

One day, according to Uncle Jimmy, Esther invited my parents over to visit the Barksdales.

And something wonderfully ordinary happened.

They became friends.

They started a monthly pinochle group. Pinochle, by the way, was practically in the Jackson family's DNA.

Louise and her husband joined.

Uncle Jimmy remembered they had “great times together” and enjoyed one another's company for many years. A few years ago, I had my dad’s old 35mm videos converted to a digital format. Guess who was in those videos?

None of this felt familiar to me as a child.

They were simply Aunt Agnes, Uncle Jimmy, and the other adults who were part of my parents' world.

Now I can see the network forming:

Cheyney.

West Chester.

Coatesville classrooms.

Philadelphia classrooms.

Greenway Avenue.

Island Road.

Pinochle.

Friendships that lasted for decades.

I inherited the circle without knowing how it began.

Genealogy is finally introducing me to it.

The Aunts and Uncles Who Weren't

Besides Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Agnes, I remember others in the circle fondly. Many of them appeared somehow linked to education. There were Roy and Virginia Taylor, Clarence and Evelyn Robertson, and Mr. and Mrs. William Roberson, all of whom lived in Yeadon or Lansdowne.

I'm sure I've forgotten some names, but that's really the point. This wasn't simply a group of professionals who occasionally socialized together. They became family and role models. They all achieved success in their careers and played important roles in the community.

I remember the adults attending large gatherings in the Catskill Mountains with other Black educators from Philadelphia schools. Families came too. I still have a remarkable group photograph from one of those gatherings. My mother is there, with my father standing just behind her, surrounded by scores of adults and children.

As a child, I saw Mom and Dad in a group photograph. As a genealogist, I see something different.

I see a community. And I can't help wondering: How many of those people had known my mother at Cheyney?

These relationships also conceal another genealogical challenge. Our family often honored close friends by calling them “Aunt” and “Uncle.” As a child, I didn't have to distinguish between blood relatives and friends.

As a genealogist, however, I'm discovering that sometimes I do.

And perhaps this journey shows us another lesson: family doesn't always come from a family tree.

The Mother / The Son

Now my time machine has to move forward.

About three decades.

This time, I don't have to imagine everything.

I was there.

I became a student at Cheyney, too.

Think about that.

My mother attended Cheyney when it was Cheyney Training School for Teachers, around the time the institution was becoming State Teachers College at Cheyney.

I attended when it was Cheyney State College.

And in 1983, the year I graduated, the institution became Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.

Mom and I attended the same institution at two distinct points in time.

For my Marvel and DC Comics fans, maybe Geraldine and Wayne existed in our own little Cheyney multiverse.

Same place.

Different time.

Different lives.

Different Cheyney.

And eventually our timelines crossed.

Today, I see something else. I see two Cheyney generations.

She could remember the campus of 1950.

I knew the campus in the early 1980s.

She became a teacher.

I chose a different professional path.

But somehow, over three decades after Geraldine Jackson walked onto that campus as a young college student, she was standing beside her son as he graduated from Cheyney too.

I wish I had understood then what I understand now.

I would have asked more questions.

Back to Now

My imaginary time machine has brought me home.

I didn't receive the answer I wanted.

I still don't know exactly why my mother decided to become a teacher.

There may be a letter somewhere.

A yearbook inscription.

A Cheyney record.

A newspaper article.

Maybe another email sitting forgotten in an old folder.

That's the genealogist in me talking.

Keep looking.

But the son in me is beginning to understand something else.

Maybe finding the answer isn't the only reason for the journey.

I started wanting to ask:

Mom, why did you become a teacher?

Instead, I met Geraldine Jackson, 20 years old.

I found some people who shared her Cheyney world.

I discovered where she began teaching.

I learned how some teachers around her became lifelong friends.

And I looked again at an old photograph of my mother standing beside me at my own Cheyney graduation.

Maybe I don't have to know exactly why Geraldine Jackson decided to become a teacher to understand what that decision produced.

I'm part of the answer.

Stay Tuned...

Our time travel remains unfinished.

Episode 3 of Who Would You Like to Meet?

Here's your hint:

This time, I'm traveling to one city block.

A Question for You

If you could travel back in time and meet one of your parents before they became your parent, what would you ask them?

This is a second question for genealogists:

What have you discovered about your parents' lives that you wish you had known while they were still here to tell you the story?

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