African Americans in the Journals
Excerpt on Mary Elizabeth Miles Bibb
from Framingham State Archive room collected on November 12, 2022
Olivia Davidson
“Olivia A. Davidson.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Nov. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_A._Davidson.
For our part of the project, we looked through the journals and tried to find if Mary Elizabeth Miles Bibb had a journal herself but she did not, Since we couldn't find that information we looked at if anyone mentioned African Americans or their experience with them at Framingham Normal School within the journals, We looked at Lydia Stows Journal and Eliza Goulds, But there was no information within their journals which is surping because there wasn't a lot of African Americans going to School during the 1800s, so you would think because of the time period it would be written about especially if they were women. After looking through the journals and not finding much we had to look deeper within our archive, we had some luck and found some information about another African American woman that went to Framingham Normal School. Her name was Olivia Davidson, Olivia Davidson was Booker T. Washington's second wife, Which is one of our theories as to why some historians thought Davidson was the first African American Graduate from Framingham Normal School, when it was Mary Miles Bibb, From our research, we found how difficult it was to actually find any information on Miles Bibb, With no pictures and even through a Google Search there's not much information.
The information that we did gather on Miles Bibb was that she was born in Rhode Island, Graduated from Framingham Normal School in 1843, and later on, became one of the first African American women teachers, she also ran a Newspaper in Canada called "Voice of the Fugitive", with her Husband Henry Bibb which was the first major newspaper targeted specifically for Black Canadians. Along with her newspaper, She and Henry Bibb would help out slaves through the Underground Railroad and Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Because there was such little information within the Journals, we had to resort to looking through the transcripts and google searches which was slim but helpful. When we first started this project the question we had was why isn't there any information on African Americans or by African Americans during this time. Today in 2022 we have a dormitory building named after Mary Elizabeth Miles Bibb in her honor, But we have almost no information and no journals with any perspective from Miles Bibb or different races, Its not like African Americans didn't go here so we wanted to see if we could find any information on them and what we could dig up within our archive room.