Melvin B. Tolson
Marshall, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Poet, professor, and playwright, Melvin Beaunorus Tolson was born on February 6, 1898 in Kansas City, Missouri, to Rev. Alonzo, a Methodist minister, and Lera Ann (Hurt) Tolson. Melvin graduated high school in 1918 in Kansas City, Missouri and then earned a Bachelor’s degree in English in 1923 from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the nation’s first Black college. Tolson began his teaching career in 1924 at Wiley College in Marshall, where he remained until 1947. While at Wiley College, Tolson taught English and Speech, created an award-winning debate team, co-founded the Intercollegiate Southern Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts, directed the theater club and coached junior varsity football. The debate team, the Wiley Forensic Society, packed venues and won many high-profile debates, including the 1933 defeat of England’s Oxford University and the 1935 defeat of the University of Southern California, the year’s national champions. Several of Tolson’s students became influential civil rights activists, including James L. Farmer, Jr., Fred Lewis and Heman Sweatt. Tolson’s passion and eloquence transferred to his own writings. From 1937 to 1944, Tolson wrote a regular column in The Washington Tribune called “Caviar and Cabbages,” a series largely based on African American life. Tolson left Wiley College for Langston University in Oklahoma in 1947. His poetry and writings continued to receive acclaim and he served as Mayor of Langston from 1954 to 1962. Tolson died on August 29, 1966, but will forever be remembered as an incredible orator, writer and educator who inspired others to prevail. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Poet and professor Melvin B. Tolson taught at Wiley College from 1924 to 1947, where he built an award-winning debate team that packed venues and famously bested national champion USC in 1935. His students included future civil rights leaders James L. Farmer, Jr., Fred Lewis, and Heman Sweatt. A celebrated writer whose newspaper column chronicled African American life, Tolson later taught at Langston University and even served as the Oklahoma town's mayor.
Why it matters
Tolson turned a small Black college's debate squad into a proving ground for the civil rights generation, showing how the classroom fed the movement.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Melvin B. Tolson
- · James L. Farmer, Jr.
- · Heman Sweatt
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Leonard Farmer, Sr.
Marshall, TX
James Leonard Farmer, Sr. earned a doctorate from Boston University in 1918 and became a Methodist minister and scholar of philosophy and religion, teaching at Wiley College and other historically Black institutions across the South. A popular speaker and author, he pastored churches in Marshall, Texarkana, and Galveston. His son, James Farmer, Jr., grew up to found the Congress of Racial Equality and lead the civil rights movement.
H. B. Pemberton
Marshall, TX
Henry Bertram Pemberton, born in 1867, became the first college graduate of Wiley College in Marshall and devoted his life to Black education in a segregated Texas. Named principal of the Colored School in 1894 and given permission but no money for a new building, he borrowed on his own credit to raise a two-story schoolhouse that his community repaid. Over decades he expanded Marshall's Black schools, recruited qualified teachers, and helped charter the local NAACP; in 1940 thousands of petitioners had the high school he founded renamed in his honor.
Bishop College
Marshall, TX
Founded in 1881 by the Baptist Home Mission Society, Bishop College became Marshall's second historically Black college, funded by New York educator Nathan Bishop, his wife Caroline, and local Baptist ministers. Over the decades it taught more than twenty disciplines and trained ministers, and it fielded championship athletic teams. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed its 1960 commencement, and its students joined the sit-ins of the civil rights era before the campus relocated to Dallas; the school closed in 1988.
Atlanta-Miller Grade School
Atlanta, TX
Public education in Atlanta, Texas dates to 1874, and for generations separate schools served Anglo and African American children. This building rose in 1936 as a school for white students, funded by the New Deal's Works Progress Administration, and grew with additions as enrollment climbed. Integrated in 1970 and closed as a school in 1974, it was later saved from demolition by concerned citizens who bought it in 2001.