even considered leaving; each absence or any threat thereof was greeted with impassioned letters from her students imploring her to stay. “You have enriched my life beyond my power to ever express,” wrote one student. Another pleaded: “Surely you will not go? What will we do without you? What will the Department Club do without you? We all know that your unselfish work, your gifts of mind and heart have made the club. You have endeared yourself to this entire community, by the charm of personality, your many gifts of rare quality—your Christian virtues and graces—and the thought of having to give you up, brings sorrow to all of us.”26 One student even wrote an ode to her that began:
When French dons her Doctor’s hood and gown
We see the earnest woman’s eyes betray
A fond expectancy. She holds a sway
More sure than any queen with blazing crown.27
Two things are evident from these writings: that French’s students adored her and that she was a powerfully gifted teacher who succeeded in awakening in her students a yearning to connect with knowledge and enlightenment.
It was typical for French to receive gifts at the end of every lecture season. Her diary notes the grateful receipt of flowers, china, drawings, paintings, and silverware. Her lectures were always well attended; she noted that three hundred women attended a lecture in 1920, an observation supported by a statement in the Shreveport Times the same year: “Dr. French and Mrs. Ellerbe are planning the lectures again in the Council chamber, but I don’t know, those who came late last year stood up, and this year everybody is coming back—and then some.” Largely by dint of French’s charisma, women joined the Woman’s Department Club in droves. By 1941, it claimed a membership of one thousand. Membership may have been as high as sixteen hundred during World War II.28
Such adulation must have been hard to walk away from, and, indeed, French did not. She continued her work as a lecturer with the Woman’s Department Club for a total of eighteen years, and she served in other capacities as well: life member, vice president, chairman of literature, member of the board of directors. The twenty-fifth anniversary yearbook applauds her “joy and passion of the natural teacher” and states: “Her interest and cooperation have been felt throughout the club. A bronze plaque on the rear wall of the auditorium attests to the esteem in which Dr. French is held by this group of 1000 women.” It was presented to French at the close of her lecture series in 1936 and remains hanging today.29
Katherine Jackson French at the Woman’s Department Club of Shreveport. Courtesy of Katherine Tolbert Buckland.
The Professor: Centenary College and the AAUW
French’s light found other ways to shine. In 1924, a great opportunity came her way: the position of professor of English at Centenary College in Shreveport.
French began working at Centenary College in September 1924. She was to stay there for twenty-five years. Strangely, her diary contains no details about her hiring, noting only the date she began. The hiring process remains a mystery. It is possible that members of the college attended her lectures, realized what an outstanding teacher she was, and initiated the process that led to her hiring. It is also possible that her social skills and activities had something to do with it. She entertained and called on people frequently. Her “guest” list takes up five columns in her diary for 1919–1920, her “call” list two. Finally, she was active in the First Methodist Church in Shreveport, taught Sunday school, and belonged to the Ladies Missionary Society and the Junior League. The Shreveport First Methodist Church had deep ties to Centenary and had helped bring the college there from Jackson thirteen years earlier. Those ties probably worked to French’s advantage. Her prodigious social skills would have allowed her to network and to lay the foundation for her employment at Centenary.30
Centenary College. Photograph by Elizabeth DiSavino.
When she first arrived at the lush and verdant Centenary campus, only five of the twenty faculty members were women (including two of the music teachers, one of whom was married to the director of music, and another professor who carried the title “Director of Expression”). There were only three professors who held doctorates, and only one of those—French—was a woman. Once again, French found herself in the position of breaking barriers. She proved to be outspoken, especially for a new hire, and lost no time advocating for the cause of educating the underserved. At a 1924 luncheon with fellow Centenary employees, the newly minted professor gave an impassioned speech about how Centenary should not be “a rich man’s college” and should help “not the few, elect, who have always gone” but also the less fortunate get an education.31
French’s teaching left a deep impression on her students and colleagues alike. One of her students, Charles Brown, remembers her as “a great teacher”: “She lived Shakespeare. She pantomimed Shakespeare. In one play, she pantomimed a snake all the way across the length of the classroom. I don’t know if she killed him, but she stomped on him! She did that a lot.” Brown recalls that she loved English literature and tried to get him to memorize Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but he was “a World War II vet who was not too hot to trot for school anyway,” so “she was not real successful.” Brown also recalls her as “tall for a lady, then, probably five-seven, five-eight.” She enunciated clearly, he notes, and did not have an overly loud voice, but everyone could hear her “over all the class.” Hers was “not a soft little ladylike voice” but more like “a ‘years-of-getting-students-to-listen’ type voice.” “Everybody liked her,” he continued. “Definitely not overbearing. She did not try to make you do anything; she tried to get you to do things.” Occasionally, French would sing, though Brown could not recall what. “I guess you could say she had what you would not classify as a singer’s voice,” he recalls wryly.32
A colleague, Dr. Betty Speairs, remembers French toward the end of her career. Speairs arrived at Centenary to teach at the age of twenty-two. She recalls going to a faculty picnic her first year, and that to her surprise, a gray-haired French jumped up and read Shakespeare to all in attendance: “She did an excellent dramatic job. Very entertaining! I was impressed by this entertainment at a faculty picnic.” Speairs recalls the faculty being “very respectful of French.” She also somewhat ruefully recalls French talking her into running for president of the Louisiana chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). She won. “I shouldn’t have [run], but she was very persuasive,” recounts Speairs.33
French was still talked about even after her career was over. Dr. Lee Morgan, who taught at Centenary after French’s retirement but heard lingering memories of her, recalls a story about her devoutness coming into conflict with her teaching duties. “She would read a great deal to her classes,” he recalls. “She would read up to a word like ‘maidenhead,’ read right up to it and simply omit it … a real old-fashioned prudish person—an oddity in her personality. I do remember she was well-respected as a teacher.”34
French served on committees, often more than one a year. She rarely missed a faculty meeting. Among the motions she made were one for the college to join the AAUW (in 1941) and another to elect two women to membership on the board of trustees (in 1942). Both motions carried unanimously, which again speaks to her communication and social skills. In another instance, French suggested that the faculty work on plans to “get the students more actively engaged in chosen churches.” The dual issues of religion and women remained constants throughout her time in Shreveport.35
The Frenches were very much at home in Shreveport.
