The 1936 Science Open House

Man with skeleton
Image source: https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/15341.32

By 1930, science had emerged as one of the more rigorous and progressive academic programs at ECTC. From the start, the study of science had been an integral part of teacher education due to the dearth of trained science teachers in the state. In the fall of 1931, a new Science Club was organized, composed of an impressive group of dedicated students who had successfully completed a significant number of courses in science education. The Science Club of the 1930s was not the first at ECTC – another, Phi Epsilon, had appeared in the late 1920s — but the Science Club founded in 1931 proved more resilient, continuing until the mid-1960s when it was supplanted by the more specialized Biology Club.

Under the direction of Henry Oglesby, the first president and also the first male to graduate from ECTC, the Science Club soon became one of the most active student organizations on campus. By 1937, it had grown from 25 members to 125, and gained affiliation with the Student Science Clubs of America.

In 1935 and again in 1936, the club sponsored a highly successful Science Open House attended by 500 its first year and then 1,500 its second. The 1936 Open House, staged in the Science Building (later named Graham), ran for two days, May 1-2, featuring biology exhibits such as “Useful Bacteria,” “Life History of the Fly,” “Evolution of Plants,” “Circulation in Man,” and “Ameba and Paramecium,” as well as “museum exhibits” such as “Protozoan Animals,” “the Tree of Life,” “Disease-Producing Bacteria in Relation to Man,” and “Antitoxins and Vaccines.” Physics and chemistry exhibits were on the second floor of the Science Building. ECTC faculty Dr. R. J. Slay, Ms. Lorraine Hunter, Ms. Jessie Mack, and Ms. Catherine Cassidy helped coordinate the Open House.

Those attending the 1936 Open House included a group from “the local colored high school” (later, C. M. Eppes High School), led by their science teacher, Mr. C. G. Mabry. This visit stands as the first ever by a group of African American students on the ECTC campus. Although chartered for the education of “young white men and women,” the college on this occasion, admittedly exceptional, welcomed local black high school students on campus for a brief academic visit, presumably finding a loophole within the strictures of the Jim Crow charter that, as interpreted by later administrators, purportedly disallowed the same.

In a small article published on the front page of the Teco Echo, Mr. C. G. Mabry, commenting on the experience of the group of African American students at the Open House, remarked, “We’ve had a profitable and a very interesting time.” Mr. Mabry’s group included first-year general science and third year chemistry students. Reportedly, they spent “over an hour viewing the Science Club annual exhibit.” During their visit, the students “were very enthusiastic … and made many notations with paper and pencil as the guides directed them through the exhibit.”

One of Mabry’s students, Sara Madeline Taylor, a freshman at “the Greenville Industrial School,” wrote an impressive essay entitled, “My Visit to East Carolina Teachers’ College,” that won for her an “A.” It was published in the Teco Echo in its entirety, and is reproduced below. Taylor’s essay gives a good summary description of the Science Open House exhibit, and itself stands as the first and only entry by an African American published in the ECTC newspaper.

My Visit To East Carolina Teachers’ College

Teachers’ College. I was accompanied by several of my classmates and some of the third year pupils, as well as by some of our instructors. I was very glad to get the chance to go since I saw and had explained to me many things that will be of help to me. I will try to relate some of the things I saw.

First we visited the Biology Department. Here we saw a representation of the human body and the circulation of the blood. It takes the blood thirty seconds to go through the body. It leaves the heart, after passing through the auricles and ventricles, and goes to the lungs where it is purified. From the lungs it goes to all parts of the body. The value of minerals and chemicals, of which the body is composed, is about $69.53.

We saw many products made from corn, among which were adhesive tape, shoe polish, Rit, paint, paste, powder puffs and soap. We also saw products made from peanuts. Some of these were artificial silk, paper, salad dressing oil, castile soap, candies and medicines. Peanuts are valuable chiefly for their fats, carbohydrates, proteins, water and ashes.

Many women of olden days used cosmetics which seem very peculiar to us today. The Egyptian women used some of these: blood of a black cow for hiding black hair. Flax, milk and oil were used for the prevention of wrinkles. Fats of dogs were their remedy for baldness. Crocodile earth, which had been soaked in onion water was their eye brow dye. The fats of cats, lions, goats and snakes went to make up their hair tonics. The Greek and Roman women used about the same cosmetics. For vanishing cream they used beans cooked in butter. Goat tallow and beech tree ashes perfumed with cinnamon made their soaps.

There were other things which were of interest. Some of these were the different kinds of wood, such as oak, pine, cedar, ash and many others. The various processes in the manufacture of rayon from wood are very interesting.

Nature printing was also interesting. This is done by placing a leaf in ink and laying it on paper. When the leaf is removed, an interesting print will be observed.

Another exhibit of interest was the aquarium balance. A fish or frog was placed in a jar with a plant. No food of any kind was ever put into the jar because the plant feeds the fish and the fish feeds the plant.

We next visited the department of embryology. Here we saw the embryos of a frog and a chicken. When the embryo chicken is about eight or ten days old the eyes are very large. The embryo chicken matures in about twenty-one days. It grows a great deal in one day.

The Chemistry department is located on the second floor. Here we saw a metal put into six different chemicals, when lighted each produced a different flame. We saw many quartz products there. There were many kinds of rocks and crystals. Near these were several natural ores. Some of these were iron, copper, zinc and lead. Many of these are to be found in North Carolina.

Many other things were there to interest us. Some of these were the making of coffee. Coffee is a bean. After ripening, it is picked, dried, roasted and ground.

We saw also how water is purified. Looking about me I saw many cakes of beauty soap. Some were Ivory, Palm Olive, Camay and Woodbury. It was decided that the Ivory is the best soap. This is because it is pure and contains no oils. To prove this is simple: It floats! Woodbury’s is second best. There were on this table also cosmetics of modern women.

On a table was served the right kind of dinner. It was divided so that a person would get a certain number of calories in all of his food. We also saw what is known as the preservation of foods. There was a jar of pears which was preserved thirty years ago, yet they are as firm and pretty as though they were the result of last season’s work. We saw the expansion of metal. A very small ball of metal was easily placed into a jar. After it had been heated to a high degree it would not go into the jar again. We saw different types of pulleys, thermometers, and instruments for measuring air pressure.

Last of all we went to the Zoology department where all kinds of animals are preserved in formaldehyde or some other preservative. There were many kinds of snakes including the rattler. We were shown the rattle from the tail of one of these. Too, there were turtles, frogs, and fishes. Many kinds and shapes of shells were shown, and some were very pretty.

This does not tell one half of what we saw. Some of the things we saw I cannot write or tell about. Nevertheless, I want to thank those who made it possible for my class to go. I cannot put into words my thanks to my science teacher, Prof. C. G. Mabry, and those at East Carolina Teachers’ College for our witnessing that exhibit. It makes me appreciate science and love nature more.

Sara Madelyn Taylor, ‘39
Greenville Industrial School

If only for a moment, the Science Club’s Open House and Miss Taylor’s essay seemed to herald a turning point in ECTC history away from Jim Crow bigotry and toward a more open and egalitarian approach to education. However, the following year, the 1937 Tecoan, illustrated throughout with depictions of African Americans engaged in labor on a cotton plantation, proved this illusory. Whatever leadership capacity the Science Club might have assumed in charting a more progressive educational role for the college all but vanished as its activities took the form of club trips and social events. By the 1950s, it made a different name for itself as the lead sponsor of the annual Sadie Hawkins Day festivities. While perhaps thereby pioneering a new dynamic in male/female relations, the latter remained, as before, with the exception of the 1936 Open House, operative within the confines of the still dominant segregationist order of the first half of the twentieth century.

Sources

Additional Related Material

The Teco Echo, dated May 13, 1936, ran an article about the successful Science Open House earlier that month. Image Source: https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38042

The Teco Echo, dated May 13, 1936, also included the full text of Sara Taylor's winning essay. Image Source: https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/38042

Citation Information

Title: The 1936 Science Open House

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 1/31/2021

 

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