The Annals of Volume 65, Number 4 Iowa Fall 2006 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue RICHARD M. BREAUX describes the racial climate in the schools of Buxton, Iowa, in the early twentieth century. He argues that at a time when segregation and racial violence were on the rise across the country, the presence of African American teachers and integrated schools in Bux- ton were key factors in residents’ memories of racial harmony in the town. Richard M. Breaux is assistant professor in the Center for Applied Study of American Ethnicity and the Department of History at Colorado State University. DAVID W. SCHWIEDER AND DOROTHY SCHWIEDER trace and analyze the political career of H. R. Gross, U.S. congressman from Iowa’s Third District from 1948 to 1974. They conclude that his focus on govern- ment spending did not result in a major budgetary impact, but his legisla- tive style improved the deliberative process and his close scrutiny of fiscal legislation provided a degree of accountability often lacking in the U.S. House of Representatives. David Schwieder is assistant professor of political science at Susque- hanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Dorothy Schwieder is University Professor Emerati of history at Iowa State University. Front Cover At a meeting of the Bull Elephant Club in 1974, former broadcasting col- league and then Governor of California Ronald Reagan presented Con- gressman H. R. Gross with a shirt bearing the logo “H.R. Gross 144.” Every session, Gross introduced in Congress the eponymous H.R. 144 (cleverly named because House bills start with “H.R.,” for “House Reso- lution,” and a gross equals 12 dozen, or 144), a measure that proposed a general program of fiscal restraint. For more on Gross’s political career, see the article by David and Dorothy Schwieder in this issue. Editorial Consultants Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State R. David Edmunds, University of Texas University at Dallas Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of H. Roger Grant, Clemson University Chicago William C. Pratt, University of Nebraska William Cronon, University of Wisconsin– at Omaha Madison Glenda Riley, Ball State University Robert R. Dykstra, State University of Malcolm J. Rohrbough, University of Iowa New York at Albany Dorothy Schwieder, Iowa State University The Annals of Third Series, Vol. 65, No. 4 Fall 2006 Iowa Marvin Bergman, editor Contents 301 “We Were All Mixed Together”: Race, Schooling, and the Legacy of Black Teachers in Buxton, 1900–1920 Richard M. Breaux 329 The Power of Prickliness: Iowa’s H. R. Gross in the U.S. House of Representatives David W. Schwieder and Dorothy Schwieder 369 Book Reviews and Notices 398 New on the Shelves 403 Index to Volume 65 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY FOUNDED IN 1863 Copyright 2006 by the State Historical Society of Iowa ISSN 0003-4827 Book Reviews and Notices 369 STEPHEN ARON, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State DANIEL P. BARR, ED., The Boundaries Between Us: Natives and Newcomers along the Frontiers of the Old Northwest Territory, 1750–1850 by Rebekah M. K. Mergenthal 372 BETTY DERAMUS, Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad, by Deborah A. Lee 373 KENNETH L. LYFTOGT, Iowa’s Forgotten General: Matthew Mark Trumbull, by Patrick G. Bass 374 DAVID D. VAN TASSEL, “Behind Bayonets”: The Civil War in Northern Ohio, by Donald C. Elder III 376 EDMUND J. RAUS JR., Banners South: A Northern Community at War, by Kenneth L. Lyftogt 377 TIMOTHY B. SMITH, The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battleground MARK GRIMSLEY AND STEVEN E. WOODWORTH, Shiloh: A Battlefield Guide by Dwight T. Pitcaithley 380 DARREL E. BIGHAM, On Jordan’s Banks: Emancipation and its Aftermath in the Ohio River Valley, by Mitch Kachun 382 DAVID L. CAFFEY, Frank Springer and New Mexico: From the Colfax County War to the Emergence of Modern Santa Fe, by Jeffrey P. Brown 383 DON L. HOFSOMMER, Minneapolis and the Age of Railways, by Kevin B. Byrne 384 JAMES GREEN, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Move- ment and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America, by David M. Anderson 386 KENNETH A. BREISCH AND ALISON K. HOAGLAND, EDS., Building Environments: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X, by Mary Anne Beecher 387 SARAH W. TRACY, Alcoholism in America: From Reconstruction to Prohibition, by Rachel E. Bohlmann 389 ROBERT P. J. COONEY JR., Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement, by Kathleen M. Green 390 HELEN L. LAIRD, A Mind of Her Own: Helen Connor Laird and Family, 1888–1982, by Theresa Kaminski 392 BRUCE C. SMITH, The War Comes to Plum Street, by Terrence J. Lindell 393 VIRGIL W. DEAN, An Opportunity Lost: The Truman Administration and the Farm Policy Debate, by Richard S. Kirkendall 395 DONALD T. CRITCHLOW, Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism: A Woman’s Crusade, by Glen Jeansonne “We Were All Mixed Together”: Race, Schooling, and the Legacy of Black Teachers in Buxton, 1900–1920 RICHARD M. BREAUX IN MAY 1985, Iowa State University professor Janice Beran interviewed former Buxton resident Dorothy Neal Collier about blacks’ and whites’ experiences in that long-disappeared coal- mining town. Collier was a child when the Consolidation Coal Company maintained the small town in south-central Iowa from 1900 to 1920. She had attended Fifth Street elementary school, one of the town’s three racially integrated grade schools. After the Neals, like an increasing number of black families, left Buxton in 1916 for Cedar Rapids and other parts of Iowa and the Midwest, Dorothy, her brother Harry, and other black chil- dren like them began to notice that their educational experi- ences in Buxton had differed greatly from those in other towns in Iowa. Racial tensions and racial discrimination in education and employment were more obvious in towns elsewhere, and black teachers were extremely rare.1 1. Dorothy Collier, interview with Janice Beran, 6/19/1991, cited in Janice A. Beran, “Diamonds in Iowa: Blacks, Buxton, and Baseball,” Journal of Negro History 75 (1992), 93. Here I focus primarily on schooling rather than education generally; hence, important institutions such as the church, home, and YMCA are discussed briefly and only in relation to the school. I am grateful to Marvin Bergman, V. P. Franklin, Robert F. Jefferson, Christine A. Ogren, Katrina M. Sanders-Cassell, and four anonymous viewers for help- ful comments and suggestions. Research for the article was supported by a 2004–2005 State Historical Society of Iowa Research Grant. THE ANNALS OF IOWA 65 (Fall 2006). © The State Historical Society of Iowa, 2006. 301 302 THE ANNALS OF IOWA In interviews conducted in the 1980s, many former Buxton residents spoke of their lives and education in the context of their personal and collective experiences before, during, and after their time in Buxton. Always conscious of life for African Americans outside Buxton, both within and beyond Iowa’s borders, African Americans from Buxton realized that although Buxton was not perfect in regards to race relations, it was in- deed a utopia relative to places in other parts of the United States and places to which they later migrated. For example, former resident Charles Taylor remembered that his grandpar- ents received the education in Buxton that they had been de- nied in Virginia. Taylor also pointed out that his grandparents had a difficult time adjusting to the racial climate in Buxton be- cause in the South they did not believe that whites could be trusted.2 Another former Buxton resident recalled, “Buxton was a good place to live. They were good times. Then we moved to Des Moines and stepped back one hundred years.”3 Former residents’ statements contrasting Buxton with places with more tense racial conditions were not limited to working conditions; Dorothy Collier remembered of her school days in Buxton, “We were all mixed together. I couldn’t understand the prejudice when we moved to Cedar Rapids when I was nine.”4 2. Charles Taylor, interview with Dorothy and Elmer Schwieder, 7/8/1980; Dorothy Schwieder, Joseph Hraba, and Elmer Schwieder, Buxton: Work and Racial Equality in a Coal Mining Community (Ames, 1987). Schwieder, Hraba, and Schwieder offer some insights into education in Buxton, but they omit many of the details concerning education in Buxton from their monograph, although two-fifths of their interviewees at least mentioned schools and education. Those interviews and reports from the Bystander, Iowa’s statewide African American newspaper, based in Des Moines, inform this article. All interviews, unless otherwise noted, refer to those conducted by Joseph Hraba or Dorothy and Elmer Schwieder. They are stored in audiotape and transcribed form in the Dorothy Schwieder Collection at the State Historical Society of Iowa, Des Moines. Interview page numbers refer to those designated when the transcribed interviews were catalogued. 3. Former resident quoted in David M. Gradwohl and Nancy M. Osborn, Ex- ploring Buried Buxton: Archaeology of an Abandoned Iowa Coal Mining Town with a Large Black Population (Ames, 1990), 191. 4. Collier, interview. See also Vanessa Siddle Walker, Their Highest Potential: An African American School Community in the Segregated South (Chapel Hill, NC, 1996), 5–6, 224; and Faustine Childress Jones, A Traditional Model of Educational Excellence: Dunbar High School of Little Rock, Arkansas (Washington, DC, 1981), 3. Schooling in Buxton 303 At a time when Jim Crow reigned supreme in the North and the South, the residents of Buxton carved out a space for themselves where African Americans and European Americans worked side by side as laborers and professionals. In Buxton’s schools, expressions of white supremacy and racial tension were relatively rare. Buxton was one of a few towns in Iowa that em- ployed African American teachers in racially integrated schools before the 1940s, and it was possibly the only town to employ more than one African American teacher in its schools simulta- neously.5 Buxton’s schools and black teachers left the imprint on the minds of Buxtonites that blacks and whites could learn, work, play, and live together with little fear of racial hostility.