Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister - David Rae Morris/Photographer and Filmmaker

Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister was born October 24th, 1899 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The oldest of three children, her father was a mail carrier and her mother a school teacher. In a time when more than 90 percent of the black population of Mississippi made a living from share-cropping or domestic service, the McAllister family represented the small percentage of middle-class blacks. Young Ellie, as she was called, excelled in school. She graduated from high school at the age of 15, and in 1919 became the youngest graduate of Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama. In 1929, she became the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. from Columbia University in New York City. For 50 years she taught education and psychology at such historically black colleges and universities as Southern University, Virginia State, Fisk, Dillard, Grambling, Miner Teachers College (now part of the University of the District of Columbia), and Jackson State. She retired in 1970. I met Dr. McAllister in 1986, while working as a staff photographer for the Vicksburg Evening Post. Five years later, I wrote my Master's thesis on her at the University of Minnesota. As part of this project, Dr. McAllister wrote commentary to accompany the photographs. This not only gave her a "voice" within the work, it also brokedown traditional concepts of subject-object so prevalent in most portraiture. Dr. McAllister died in January 1996 at the age of 96.

Jane Ellen McAllister in her yearbook picture from Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama in 1919. At 19, McAllister was the youngest student to graduate from Talladega. Photograph courtesy of the McAllister family collection.

Seventy-two years later: Dr. Jane Ellen McAllister at the front door to her house in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Dr. McAllister: "I refuse to waste time, effort, and endure pain to have teeth put in. If my friends don't want to see a toothless old woman, they will not come. I go nowhere at anytime. Once I had not even a laugh wrinkle! Hard to say goodbye to yesterday. My hands always impress me--the hands of a hard-working woman, a do-it-yourself woman, cutting limbs, run ning a mower. Behind me are my steps leading from the lower level of my life to the upper. I pull myself happily up hundreds of times a day. I leave the door open so that people know I am here, since I don't hear well. The dogs guard the door so I have no fear. To my sur prise, I welcome my callers instead of frightening them with my change from smooth youth to fat, wrinkled, stooped old woman. I have a half-way house on the first four steps by the porch."

Dr. McAllister walking with some of the stray dogs she cares for. She has had as many as eight living with her at a time.

Dr. McAllister: "I look like McArthur's widow in National Geographic this month. I use my broom or anything that is handy for a walking stick. Everywhere is a potential walking stick and I stoop in order to balance. When an abused and battered dog is shaking and trembling and yet wagging his tail for love, who can resist? I can't."

Dr. McAllister mowing the lawn at age 90.

Dr. McAllister: "I am a do-it-yourselfer--Never give up--in spite of heat and my plans upset and the world falling apart, I mowed the lawn with the power mower this morning at 5 a.m. until I used a tank o f gasoline. I mow the whole lawn twice a week or more if I can stop some passerby (ANY passerby--postman, priest, young, old, white or black): 'Will you start this mower for me please?' I haven't the strength now to crank the machine. I've tried and tr ied. I like to do everything for my house inside and out myself. It is an act of love and then it shows I am independent yet and not decrepit."

Dr. McAllister speaking with a friend from the phone in the dining room. The phone in the bedroom upstairs is the only one in the house that has a "hearing aid." The phone number remained listed in her father's name for almost 50 years after his death.

Dr. McAllister: "No hearing aid at this phone downstairs...I am deaf, legally blind, and grope for a word or a name sometime, have club fingers. With the changes in my body, my mind, AT&T is my life line. Every morning three or four of us check on the phone to see if we are still living. With the phone I live vicariously from my armchair."

Dr. McAllister with her Ph.D. diploma from Columbia University. She was the first black woman to receive a doctorate from Columbia University's Teachers College in 1929 and the sixth black woman overall to receive a Ph.D. in the world.

Dr. McAllister: "For this I worked as a waitress, I walked dogs in the park studying, baby-sitting, etc., any job. The whole convent [where I worked] prayed for me; I studied alone, no group invited me, if they had I would have refused. I stood highest (I think if the professor was right) because I knew the technique of taking standardized tests--skip anything that puzzles you and full speed ahead."

Dr. McAllister was the last surviving member of her family. She lived alone in the old family house that her father had bought in 1911. She used the old dining room table as her desk, taking constant notes to remind her of things to tell her visitors.

Dr. McAllister: "I wish one of my fingers was a pen and another scissors as I can open no packages, no nothing with my club fingers. An inveterate note-taker but [now] of necessity because I no longer remember. My memory now is so poor that I jot down notes constantly during the day and at night I review them and jot down plans for the next day."

Dr. McAllister climbing in the porch window after being locked out of the house.

Dr. McAllister: "This window is always left unlocked, so that if I fall out in the house, my neighbor can take care of me (but not now--nobody takes care of me now, and I hope I'll be completely and totally dead--no resusitation--I have a recorded living will)."