BLACK HISTORY
Armenia Rebecca Williams Left Evidence
The second oldest child of Willie and Mary Ella Williams, Armenia Rebecca (1894–1924), loved family, books, learning, writing, and sharing information. She inspired her siblings, classmates, and descendants, including the son whom she did not live to see become an adult. She died on August 24, 1924, just months after his 2nd birthday.
Armenia and her siblings attended Haines Normal and Industrial Institute (HI), in Augusta, GA. They loved the school, its founder Lucy Craft Laney, and everyone associated with HI.
The Augusta, Georgia, Black Community experienced rapid growth during Armenia’s lifetime. Churches, schools, social societies, businesses (insurance companies, funeral homes, grocery stores), and independent nursery schools grew along with the City of Augusta.
Diseases (yellow fever, malaria, and tuberculosis) floods, the almost complete destruction of the downtown business district by fire (1916), and the 1919 pandemic, much like the pandemic of today challenged all Augustans. During one flood, one building on Haines Institute’d campus served as a temporary hospital.*
Black (called Negro during this period) residents fought in The Civil War, The Spanish American War, World Wars I and II. Haines Institute and its students were affected by all of these events. Some students were drafted during WWI and II. The same students helped their family and friends out by sending sugar and coffee supplies to relatives and friends because these items were rationed for the general public but not for soldiers.
Armenia’s father, Willie Williams, served as treasurer for The Bricklayers and Carpenter’s Union №1. After his death, her mother, Mary Ella, stepped in to assist the group, serving as secretary from 1917–1919. She pushed past depression to attend to the needs of her children, especially her baby girl born 6 weeks after Willie’s sudden death from a massive stroke.
CONTRIBUTORS TO BLACK LIFE, 1866–1930
On January 1, 1866, Henry McNeal Turner, Bishop in The AME Church, and Member of Georgia House of Representatives spoke from the pulpit of Historic Springfield Baptist Church, the place where Morehouse college was founded. Richard R. Wright, Sr., Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Janie Porter Barrett, James Weldon Johnson, Marion Anderson, Roland Hayes, Mary McLoud Bethune, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Langston Hughes, Frank Yerby (Haines graduate), and many other national and state prominent Blacks visited Augusta and Haines to “uplift” the community, keep them informed about racial, political, and economic issues affecting Blacks.*
This intellectual stimulation was not lost on Armenia or HI students. Desite obstacles, she remained focused. She graduated May 13, 1918, from the College Preparatory Course, Haines Institute. Armenia did not attend college due to the sudden death of her sister, Pearl in August 1916, and her father in October 1916 .
Armenia lived 5 minutes walking distance from the only college for Blacks, the Historic Paine College. I believe she planned to attend Paine or go to Spelman where many of her female classmates intended to go. Instead, she went to work first at the local hospital, and later at the only Black drug store in town at the time. Both facilities were within walking distance from her home.
Writing Life
Armenia was an avid reader, letter, and postcard writer. She often gifted books, to family and friends, leaving evidence of her interests, love, and dedication to education.
She also wrote and received postcards from Haines classmates. The one below is from a friend and former classmate.Spelman Seminary is now Spelman College.
Marriage
Although Armenia documented her life, How and When she met Cicero Grant, her future husband, is unknown. He is not listed as a student at Haines Institute. What is known is that on January 12, 1921, Armenia Rebecca Williams married Cicero Grant. Their wedding announcement appeared in THE ECHO, a weekly Black Newspaper to which Armenia subscribed. The wedding took place in the bride's home.
A year later, Armenia and Cicero became proud parents of a boy, William Paul Grant
Two years after William Paul’s birth, Armenia developed tuberculosis, dying on August 24, 1924. Her letter of August 2, 1924, written from her in-laws home in South Carolina, suggests she may have known death’s hand was near. She gives Cicero very specific instructions regarding paying insurance policies as well as taking care of other businesses.
Black Epistolary
Armenia’s education, letters, postcards, interest in local, state, and world affairs, and her staunch support of Black entrepreneurship, defied America’s view that Blacks neither read nor wrote. According to Pamela Newkirk,
As linguistic snapshots of bygone eras, letters anchor us in the past with unparalleled intimacy and spontaneity, light the dark crevices of our private and public history. But despite their importance as historical markers and as literature, the letters of African Americans — like so much of Black history — have historically been undervalued or ignored.*
Thus, my mission is to make sure Armenia and my other Williams ancestors “evidence,” (letters, postcards, and pictures) is recorded, made available to future Williams descendants , and to the general public.
My ancestors wrote many EPISTOLARIES. It is gratifying to know I have that as my DNA legacy, too.
Sources
Marshall, Mary. The M. Marshall Collection
- Marshall, Mary. “TELL THEM WE’RE RISING ”: Black Intellectuals and Lucy Craft Laney In Post Civil War Augusta, Georgia.” (Drew University Dissertation, 1998)
Henry McNeal. “Celebration of the First Anniversary of Freedom Held in Springfield Baptist Church, January 1, 1866 Augusta, Ga.”
Newkirk, Pamela. LETTERS from BLACK AMERICA, 2009.
One sentence in the early part of “Politics,” Chapter 7, written by Jamelle Bouie, in Nichole Hannah Jones’s The 1619 Project, stirred painful memories of my trip to Sea Island and St. Simons Island, GA, where I first saw the ruins of a plantation and a slave hospital. That sentence…
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