Donated by Ms. Bessie M. Foster, the pictures have been held by her family for many years. There’s a remarkable story behind Valdosta State University’s portrait of Tuskegee Institute founder Dr. Booker T. Washington. The passage of the portrait from Tuskegee Institute to Valdosta State University nearly a hundred years later is a tale of a rural African-American family’s embrace of Washington’s philosophy of self-improvement and achievement. The story – and the picture – come to us from Mrs. Bessie Mae Foster, the daughter of the woman who originally was given the portrait. Foster’s grandfather, Will Shiver, was a young farmer in the early 1910s. He and his wife Anna had a family of five girls and four boys. During this time, Will attended a farmers’ conference at Tuskegee Institute and left very impressed with the school and the message of Dr. Washington. Determined that their daughters would not have to work as maids or housekeepers in white households, Will and Anna decided their daughters should study at Tuskegee Institute and train to be teachers. Will and Anna thought it was less important for their sons to go to school because the boys probably could do almost any kind of work available. The young men were encouraged to buy land and learn farming, or leave Georgia altogether and find other employment. The oldest, Will Jr., and the youngest sons followed in their father’s footsteps and bought their own farms near the family home. Two other sons went to Charlotte, N.C., where they operated a successful restaurant for years. But three of the Shiver girls – Lenora, Bessie Mae and Irene – took classes on the Tuskegee campus. Lenora was the first to go. She spent two years at Tuskegee before returning to take an elementary school teacher post in the Lowndes County School System. Bessie Mae took a similar path, studying three years at Tuskegee from about 1915 through 1918, and working part-time in the cafeteria. It was during her course of study that Bessie Mae was given the portrait of Washington that became a family heirloom. Bessie Mae then gave the picture to her parents to display and care for. Before she could graduate, Bessie Mae also found work as a Lowndes County elementary school teacher, and for a while she and Lenora worked at the same school. Their younger sister Irene, however, completed all four years of classes at Tuskegee. She graduated, married her campus boyfriend, and the two of them worked in Miami, Florida, before relocating to Boston, Massachusetts. Lenora continued to work in the county and take classes at Albany State College, where she received her degree in elementary education. Meanwhile, Bessie Mae married Ezekiel Johnson and stopped teaching when the couple started a family, eventually raising nine children. The Washington portrait, though, remained an important part of Will and Anna Shiver's home. When Will and Anna died, Lenora took possession their aging home. In 1940, she allowed the local fire department to burn down the house – but not before she returned the Booker T. Washington portrait to her sister, Bessie Mae Johnson. One of Bessie Mae and Ezekiel’s daughters was also named Bessie Mae (she married James H. Foster). She also took the lessons of her family and the Tuskegee Institute seriously, practicing self-reliance and hard work. Bessie Mae Foster graduated as a teacher from Albany State College, later earning here master of library science degree from Atlanta University. She spent years working as a librarian in Georgia and the North. But when she became disabled, she returned to live in her hometown of Valdosta. She and her sister Amy Anna built a new house on Will and Anna’s homestead and cared for her father and mother for the rest of their parents’ lives. When her mother died in 1992, the portrait was handed down to Mrs. Foster. That’s where it stayed until 2010, when she donated it to Valdosta State University’s Odum Library archives. Today, the university proudly displays the portrait of Dr. Washington as a symbol and reminder of the values that shaped and enriched the lives of generations of African-Americans in South Georgia and throughout the South.  The collection also includes the family’s picture of Martin Luther King that joined the Washington picture in the 1960’s. Written by Bessie Mae Foster and Grant Brown of VSU

Harmful Content Policy: Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collection’s collection houses materials collected to elucidate the past. We recognize that users may encounter some items within these collections that contain offensive language, viewpoints, imagery or other forms of objectionable content. Such materials document the past and should be viewed within the context of their original time period. Providing online access to these historical materials does not endorse any attitudes, prejudices, or behaviors depicted therein. Valdosta State University Archives and Special Collections is committed to upholding the principle of equal and free access to unaltered historical information. (based upon the statement for the Georgia Public Library Service on harmful content)