Archives Digital Exhibits

Early African American Labor at Averett

Created for Black History Month 2025, and a component of a larger project researching low-wage labor at Averett, the essay below helps to shine a light on the work of Black employees of Averett from its founding in 1859 to the racial integration of the student body in the fall of 1968. As most low-wage labor has left no historical traces beyond a few anonymous wage payments in archived ledgers, the research is and will remain incomplete.  If any readers can provide further information about the individuals named below, please contact the archivist.

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Researching low-wage labor is not an easy process at the best of times.  Business records tend to focus on the deeds and decisions of upper management; entry-level and low-wage work is typically credited only with a paycheck.  Work done by those at the bottom of the pay scale tends to be archived either accidentally (as one line among many in a wage ledger) or anonymously (reference to the work without naming the workers).

These problems are compounded for Black employees.  In the archival profession we talk about 'gaps' and 'silences' in collections - topics which the collections do not address, either through intentional removal of information or indifference to its original retention.  For nearly a century of Averett's history, Black employees lived almost entirely in the silences.  They often worked irregular hours rather than having set schedules and salaries.  Even when employed full-time, they often went unnamed even in internal documents; many ledgers, for example, simply refer to all Black labor as 'Help,' and note a single weekly check cut to cover the entire sum for all workers.  The money would then be parceled out in cash to each individual.

Even when Black workers are listed individually in the ledger, there are historical differences between the treatment of White workers (typically referred to as "Mr. ___") and Black (typically listed by their first name only).  Most of Averett's identifiable low-wage Black workers are named in full only once anywhere in the archives: a single line in 800 pages of ledgers spanning the years 1917 to 1932.

As such, simply compiling a list of some of the institution's Black employees requires significant historical effort: combing through entries to find stray acknowledgement of surnames; maintaining a full catalog of names and page numbers so that references to a name can be returned to once a surname is uncovered; cross-checking with City Directories and genealogical material to confirm and expand on known data; etc.  The workload is immense, and many names defy complete identification even after exhausting all avenues seeking clarity.

Naming African American Labor

From the college's founding in 1859 until the 1975 hiring of Mary Pegram as a professor of Social Work, nearly all Black labor on campus was hired solely to perform physical labor which required a minimal skill set.  Janitorial services, kitchen and dining hall work, laundry services, and general maintenance - exactly the sort of work that one might expect slaves to perform in the years before the Civil War - were the purview of African Americans.  All were considered menial jobs which, though they had relatively high visibility on campus, did not warrant mention in yearbooks, catalogues, or other publications.  Although White men and women sometimes performed these tasks, and there are numerous years for which we cannot confirm the identity of a single Black employee, all evidence suggests that the bulk of these jobs were filled with Black laborers.  For example, the 1899 catalogue contains a rule prohibiting "undue familiarity" between students and staff, while the 1904 yearbook contains a dialect joke about a maid working the third floor of Main Hall.  In each case, the phrasing strongly implies a racial component, in which students are imagined as White, and staff/maids are Black.

Thus, although one would never guess by looking at a student newspaper or a yearbook from most years, the campus typically had a small but obvious Black presence.  Students could expect to see Berkley Davis ringing the morning reveille bell, Myrtle McClenton watering plants, or - if they managed to see inside the kitchen near mealtime - multiple Black cooks.  It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that Averett hired its first Black employees in white-collar positions.  Myrtle McClenton was presumably the first to take up a desk job when, after decades at Averett, she became the primary switchboard operator for the college.  (The earliest known evidence for Mrs. McClenton's move to the switchboard is a photograph in the 1946 yearbook.)  Freddie Jeffries ("Supervisor of Office Services" in the early 1970s) and Mary Pegram (Professor of Social Work beginning in 1975) were both hired after the integration of the student body, but are the only other known white collar African American employees prior to the 1980s.

Approximately 50 Black employees can be partially identified from extant records (half by first name only).  However, only the following 23 can be definitively identified as having worked for Averett at some point.  The employment dates listed are best guesses based on known information.

• African American workers listed as occupants of the Roanoke Female College buildings in the 1880 census:
  • Liza Brandon - cook
  • Pleasant Cary - janitor
  • Phoebe Jackson - nurse (presumably child-care)
  • Cornelia Johnson - dining room servant
  • Cornelia McGhee - nurse (likewise, presumably child-care)
• Myrtle Avery / Jamerson / Carter / McClenton - laundress / maid / switchboard operator - reportedly 1912-1970
• Berkley Davis - custodian / janitor - reportedly 1918-71
• Pattie Hairston - cook & 'labor' - 1919-22
• Samantha Hooper - laundress - 1919-20
• Mary Thomas - laundress - fall 1921
• Abner Austin - 'labor' - irregular pay from 1922-27
• Roxanna Easley / Jones - laundress - 1923-27
• Beatrice Nelson / Totten - cook - 1923-50
• Otha Davis (brother of Berkley) - 'labor' / janitor / cook - 1925-40
• Mary Brazen / Oglesby (sister of Bea Nelson) - 1927-28 & 1940s-50s
• Euvalia (perhaps Eubelia?) Graves - laundress - fall 1927
• Hettie Lewis - maid - 1927-28
• Annie B. Stamps - laundress - 1927
• Smith Byrd - 'labor' - irregular paychecks in 1920s
• Pink Garrett - 'labor' - irregular paychecks in the 1920s
• Ethel Atkins - cook - 1954-?
• Edith Oliver - cook - 1964-?
• Jimmy Williams - maintenance / cook - 1965-?

The final three names were still working for Averett at the end date of this research project; their departures have thus not been pinpointed.  In addition to these 23, there are one-time appearances by: Herbert Glay, Dodson Hardy, and Lucy Williamson.  While it is possible they were regularly or irregularly employed by Averett, nothing beyond a single day's labor can be confirmed.

The other individuals whose first names litter the ledgers, but who are never graced with a surname (Bertha, Bill, Ottaway, Otelia, etc), are impossible to fully identify.  They have, therefore, been omitted here.

The Lived Experience of Black Labor

While information is significantly limited, it is possible to conjure a brief picture of African American life at Averett.

To begin with, their pay-scale, though significantly lower than White professionals, was roughly on par with White workers doing similar jobs. In the late 1920s, for example, the average teacher was making $31 per week.  Both black and white laborers were making a little less than half of that wage (in the image at the top of this exhibit, Berkley Davis and Bea Totten are both making $15, while Otha Davis and the White janitor Silas Murrell were both at $13).  Compounding that pay disparity, White professionals also received room and board for free, while laborers had to acquire their own homes and pay for any travel expenses to and from work.

Predictably, given this rate of pay, low-wage Black employees tended to live within a short walk from the college, minimizing both the duration and cost of travel to and from work.  By the 1920s, for example, the bulk of Averett's Black workers lived in the neighborhood known as Poor House Hill.  Now the site of G.W. High School, Poor House Hill was, at that time, a small Black neighborhood just outside of the city limits.  Most houses in this area would have been little more than a 5-10 minute walk down Randolph St. 

As years went by, and transportation by automobile became more common, other areas in the vicinity become equally likely.  Several Averett employees wound up living in the Holbrook-Ross district (just southeast of Poor House Hill), while many others lived in Almagro Village (an independent African American community south of the railroad tracks which was annexed by the city of Danville in 1932).  Although walking from these locations was slightly less likely, even Almagro Village - the furthest away - was at worst 20-25 minutes away on foot.

Black labor at Averett also seems to have featured a small nucleus of long-time employees surrounded by a larger crew going through very rapid turnover.  Of the 23 known names, 6 are known to have remained with the school for more than a decade.  The rest rarely stayed for more than two or three years; for 10 of them, no evidence exists that they were employed for more than a single academic year.

Although our view of all of these things may be skewed by very incomplete data, the random sample would indicate that life at Averett for African American employees was tenuous at best, but those who managed to remain with the institution did so for a very long time.  Berkley Davis and Myrtle McClenton, for example, both worked here effectively for their entire adult lives.  Both were hired in their early twenties and remained with Averett more than fifty years - two of a very small number of people who could have made that claim.