Charles P. Adams Sr.
This date marks the birth of Charles P. Adams, Sr., a Black educator and administrator who was born in 1873.
He was born in Brusly, Louisiana, and worked at Tuskegee Institute. During this time, he became a committed student of Booker T. Washington. In 1901 (after graduation), the North Louisiana Farmers’ Relief Association (NLFRA) asked Adams to return to Louisiana. The group had requested Tuskegee’s Washington to find a man capable of setting up an agricultural and industrial school in North Louisiana. Adams was that man, and that school eventually became Grambling University.
On acreage two miles west of the school’s present site, Adams established what was known as the Colored Industrial and Agricultural School. The first student body of this small school consisted of 105 students, most of whom were from the immediate community. Room and board were five dollars a month, most often paid with home-cured meat, chickens, syrup, meal, flour, and potatoes. In 1904, he married Martha N. Adams.
He lectured in nearby communities and secured financial assistance from the northern states and Canada to keep the struggling institution afloat through his connections in Washington. The school’s first faculty consisted of three people: Adams, principal and teacher; his wife, Martha, co-founder and domestic science teacher; and A. C. Welcher, a farm instructor.
In 1905, Adams left Grambling because its NLFRA Baptist membership wanted a church-centered school. The Tuskegee-trained Adams envisioned a school dedicated to training individuals to earn a good living on their farms, enhance health conditions, and live more efficiently in groups. Soon after, seven Negro men in the Grambling community, Adams among them, pledged 25 dollars each for a new school site, and a 200-acre plot five miles west of Ruston, LA, was purchased for $800. For 35 years, Adams headed the school, now officially known as Grambling State University of Louisiana. Most of those years were difficult, but Adams and Grambling persevered.
Charles Phillip Adams Sr., one of the last pioneer educators, died on June 27, 1961.
