Today’s Project 100 memory is about Martha Hursey, who graduated in 1946, and later married Saul Brown.  The memories of Martha below come from three people – her daughter, Sally Brown, her friend and fellow civil rights activist, Ed Nakawatase, and her niece, Joni Hursey Wingate.  Like yesterday’s entry, this one is long, but the life of Martha Hursey Brown deserves such attention.

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Born and raised in Bridgeton, New Jersey, Martha Hursey graduated from Bridgeton High School in 1942. “Although she is small,” her senior yearbook declared, “she seems be overflowing with energy.”  The rest of her life demonstrated that she indeed was overflowing with energy.  Upon finishing high school, she attended Glassboro State Teacher’s College during a time of change.  We know that she was involved in some of this change, but we don’t know how much due to the passage of time and the limitations of the archival record.  In the middle of her first year, while World War II raged, the College changed its discriminatory housing policy to allow African American women to live on campus in the Oak dormitory.  We do not know if Martha or her family were important to this change, but it seems likely given Martha’s later record of brave civil rights activism.  We do know that policy change led to protest of white parents, prompting a momentary reversal of the decision, and a third change back to one of integration.  In addition, we also know that by 1946, the year Martha graduated, African American students were attending social functions like dances, from which they had previously been discouraged from attending.  While Martha’s role in these changes is not clear, we do know that she became the first African American editor of the college newspaper, The Whit.  It seems highly likely that this promotion led to some resistance as well, including the resignation of some of the other student staff.  Martha herself hinted at some issues when she wrote that “Intelligent people are divorcing the idea that the outstanding Negro student is a phenomenon.”  Dora McElwain, the long-time faculty advisor for the Whit who had been on the faculty from the very earliest days, went out of her way to praise Martha for her leadership, writing about her relentless effort and how she had to do much of the work for the paper without almost any help.  McElwain concluded her celebration of young Martha Hursey: “Hats off to a person who matters!”  After graduating, Martha worked both as a reporter for the Norfolk Journal and Guide and as an elementary school teacher in Bridgeton, New Jersey.  While living in Bridgeton, she was an active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and participated in numerous actions protesting racial discrimination while pursuing a Master of Library Science degree from Drexel University.  In the late 1960s, she left Bridgeton to attend Carnegie Mellon University, earning both a Master of Arts in history and a doctorate in history.  Dr. Brown held faculty positions at Central Michigan University (associate professor of Afro-American and American women’s history), Langston University (director of libraries and associate professor of history) and Old Dominion University (associate professor of history).  She was on the Advisory Committee for New Jersey’s Civil Rights Commission, and she was on the Executive Committee of the Association of Black Women Historians.  She won numerous fellowships from institutions such as the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  She was a co-author of Faces of History (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).  She passed away in 1997 at the age of 72.  

From Sally Brown (Martha’s daughter)

I remember my mother telling me that she was excited about her going to Glassboro.  At the time, at the end of the Great Depression and beginning of World War II, travel was much more restricted.  So, it was a big deal to go to Glassboro, and it was an adventure for her.  My grandparents had not been able to attend college.  My mother said that many others were also excited for her to go to college.  Many people came out to the train station at Bridgeton to see her off.  Martha told me that she only discovered at the train station that she would need money for books at college.  The white town doctor gave Martha the money that she would need for these books.

After my mother graduated from Glassboro, she tried but failed to get a job as a reporter in New York City for the Harlem newspaper.  When this did not work out, she decided to become a teacher in the Virgin Islands.  She taught there for a couple of years.  After this, she took a job as reporter for the African American newspaper in Norfolk.  She then got a job at Fisk University and took a train to Nashville.  On that trip, she fell in love with trains, becoming a devotee of train travel from that point forward.  There, she was a publicist for the President of the University.  At Fisk, she became lifelong friends with the artist Aaron Douglas, famous for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.  After returning to the East Coast, she took a position as a lobbyist for the American Friends Service Committee, working in Washington, D.C.  In 1953, she got married to my father, Saul Tyson Brown.  He drove graders and large mechanical equipment in his early days, but his working life ended early due to his being wounded in the Korean War.  He served in the Army as a cook, but he lost his arm when a convoy in which he was driving ran over a bomb.  The man sitting next to him was killed.  Saul lost his arm and hearing in one ear. 

I was born on January 5, 1955, their first child (later I would gain a brother and a sister).  Nine months later, we moved to southern New Jersey.  My mother’s first job in Bridgeton was a fourth-grade teacher.   Sally said that her mother believed she was not enough of a disciplinarian to be a good teacher.  During this time, she got a library science degree and became a school librarian.  She was not well-liked by the administration because she was fighting for integration.  She was a member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement Colored People and also worked with Quakers from Philadelphia.  In particular, I remember her working with Ed Nakawatase of the American Friends Service Committee.  He had dropped out of college to support civil rights and protest the Vietnam War.  My mother also protested the Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of many African Americans from Bridgeton.  My parents eventually decided to fund any young Black man who wanted to go to Canada to avoid the draft.  All they had to do was to show up at their door and ask for the money that they needed.  In any event, my mother worked for the Bridgeton schools for about ten years until I was 12 years old.   We then moved to Bucks County, and my mother got a Master’s degree.  We then moved to Pittsburgh where my mother got her doctorate in history from Carnegie Mellon University.  In 1971, while we were living in Pittsburg, I graduated from high school at the age of 16.   

I then went to college at the University of Rochester.  My parents, my sister, Sherill, and my brother, Saul, Jr. moved to Michigan, where my mother had taken a position on the faculty at Central Michigan University.  While the family was in Michigan, my parents got divorced.  My mother decided that she wanted to leave after this, and she took a job at Langston University in Oklahoma.  After a few years, she left for a position at Old Dominion University.  She did not love small town Oklahoma, and she had family connections in Norfolk.  In addition, it was a better job.  I was really happy with my mother’s life in these later years.  She became a collector of Black art and travelled.  She made many friends inside and outside of Old Dominion.  When she died suddenly of pancreatic cancer, I got to meet all these people at a fabulous and well-attended memorial service in Norfolk.  She had another memorial service in Bridgeton, which was also very moving, though very different. 

From Ed Nakawatase (Martha’s friend)

Masaru Edmund Nakawatase was born in 1943 in an internment camp in Poston, Arizona.  He grew up in Seabrook, New Jersey, about six miles outside of Bridgeton, New Jersey.  His parents and about 2,500 fellow Japanese worked for Seabrook Farms, the world’s largest producer of frozen foods.  The demand for labor during the World War II was high, which led to the push for Japanese workers.  His parents had been evacuated from southern California.  He graduated from Bridgeton High School in 1962.  After his first year at Rutgers in New Brunswick, he dropped out of college and moved to Atlanta to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Coordinator (SNCC) and their Atlanta field office.  He worked for SNCC in multiple capacities, including for the Production Department and in the Research Department.  He spent 14 months working for SNCC during a very critical period for the Civil Rights Movement, and he considers that time one of the great experiences of his life.  In 1965, he returned to New Jersey to attend college and soon became involved with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).  The State of New Jersey had contracted with AFSC to implement anti-poverty measures in particular.   It was an exciting opportunity for him to find out about the area in which he had grown up and for him to use some of what he had learned while working at SNCC for a part of New Jersey that was blighted by discrimination and poverty.  After the summer of 1965, he returned to Rutgers but again only remained one semester before dropping out a second time.  AFSC’s project in Bridgeton continued, but they now focused on desegregation of the public schools.  The push to desegregate by bussing was met with much furor by white parents.  Ed was involved during this tense time, and he was part of the push for ending de facto desegregation.  It was this summer, in 1966, that he met Martha Hursey Brown.

Martha had somehow been introduced to the work of the AFSC, and we connected.  I am not sure, but we may have first met by her coming to the office in downtown Bridgeton.  This would have been in the Summer of 1966.  No matter the circumstances of our initial meeting, we soon became friends and cohorts and engaged in important work together on the issue of desegregation in Bridgeton.  We battled with school officials who denied that there was any segregation.  I can recall participating in a small march in Bridgeton on this issue, and I am fairly certain that Martha was part of this small group.  I also remember the participation of Helen Kelling, a white woman, the wife of a history teacher, Bud Kelling, at Bridgeton High School.  This march and our movement was not very popular in Bridgeton at the time.

(Bud wrote a master’s paper at Glassboro State College around the late 1960s about the 1934 strike at Seabrook Farms.  The strike had some success with increasing wages, at least temporarily, and presented the tangible possibility of interracial organizing.  The strike was led by the cannery workers, a left-led CIO union. But I digress.)

Another issue upon which I remember working with Martha was our protest of the death of a local man named Anderson Jenkins.  He had been arrested by the New Jersey State Police and did not live through his arrest.  It seemed to those of us attempting to learn what happened that Jenkins had been beaten to death.  The issue got insufficient and biased media attention, so the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) decided to protest Jenkins’s killing.  Martha was active in the NAACP at this time, and I joined her and others in a march to the police barracks, which had been organized by New Jersey NAACP president Irene Smith.  It was quite a long march, but our protest had little impact on the investigation, in part due to the continued biased coverage of the Bridgeton News.

That same summer, Martha and I supported the election bids of two young African Americans – Willie Baker and Willie Glee – for city council.  No party in Bridgeton had ever run African American candidates to this point.  Although they did not win, their participation led the Democratic candidates that year to lose.  As a result, the Democratic Party included African American candidates in all future city council slates.  In fact, the Republican Party also began to include African Americans in their slate by the end of the decade.  The result was that African Americans went from not even being candidates for city council to being guaranteed at least some participation going forward.  African American political power continued to grow, with Bridgeton eventually electing an African American mayor. 

In 1968, several of us organized a study group on the topic of African American history.  We received a notice one that day that said, “the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is watching you.”  I wish that we had responded with a mocking note criticizing their grammar, (You is? would have been the right response but we lost the moment.)  I can’t remember if Martha was still around by this time.   

I was also very active with her brother, DeEdwin (De) Hursey.  With AFSC’s help, De and I continued to get resources for work in Bridgeton, including the establishment of an organization called “Blacks on the South Side” (B.O.S.S.)  De Hursey was the main staff person for this organization.  He and Martha were kindred spirits in their pursuit of social justice.  He sadly died far too young. 

I worked with Martha closely for about three or four years.  She was a plain-spoken person.   She had no illusions about the local ruling class and was blunt in her assessment of affairs in Bridgeton.  I think these same leaders saw her as creating “problems” for them.  She was a strong local advocate for social justice who could not be dismissed as an “outside agitator”.  She was very much aware of events not only locally but also nationally and internationally.  It was easy to talk to her.  We both opposed the Vietnam War of course.  I am sure that it was a struggle for her to balance her desire for social justice, her pursuit of her own higher education, and raising her family.  We got along very well, but I wish that I had gotten to know her better outside of our civil rights work before she left to pursue her graduate degree at Carnegie Mellon.

From Joni Hursey Wingate (Martha’s niece)

Most of her friends called her Martha, but sometimes her family called her Mottie. She was Aunt Mott to me.  One story about Aunt Mott that I remember is that she applied to be the librarian at public library at Bridgeton but did not get the position, losing it to a person who did not have the same credentials but was the appropriate race for the time.  Aunt Mott was so hurt by this that she packed up and left Bridgeton. 

She got a position as a professor of history in Michigan.  She came to Virginia for several reasons.  First, she had some family connections in Norfolk.  Second, she got a better job offer. Third, I think she thought that had gotten tired of the cold in Michigan.

Aunt Mott was always trying to get us to stretch out a bit farther.  From her parents, she inherited a strong belief that every generation should improve over the previous generation. She was very focused on education.  Unlike other members of the family, I didn’t fully appreciate her push for education when I was younger.  I wasn’t as mature as others.  She also loved museums and pushed us to visit them.  I remember that she was a big supporter of family.  She encouraged us to think about retirement and to pursue investments.  She also loved to travel.  She travelled to Africa many times.  I remember one trip that I took with her with to Spain to pick up her daughter, Sally.  At the end of her life, she was living in Norfolk where she had been teaching Black history at Old Dominion University.  She died of pancreatic cancer. 

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This is part of the Department of History’s “Project 100,” the collection and sharing of one hundred memories by Glassboro State College and Rowan University alumni and staff.  One memory will be released per day in the 100 days leading up to October 20, 2023, the date of a reunion celebrating the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Glassboro Normal School, later Glassboro State College, and now Rowan University.  The reunion will take place at 7pm at the Summit City Farm and Winery in Glassboro, New Jersey.  Registration for the reunion will be open from July 11^th and will remain open until the venue reaches its 100-person capacity (or October 13^th if capacity never reached).  We do anticipate that the reunion will sell out, so please register as soon as possible by visiting the Alumni Office’s registration page here:  alumni.rowan.edu/historyreunion2023.

You can also find the up-to-date set of Project 100 memories on the Department of History’s webpage or by clicking this link:  go.rowan.edu/project100. 

William Carrigan arranged, interviewed, transcribed and/or edited these memories.  Laurie Lahey proofread and helped edit the final versions.  If you wish to share your own memories, please email Dr. Carrigan at carrigan@rowan.edu.  Alumni with Facebook accounts are encouraged to join the RU/GSC History Alumni group here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/251485937221524.