Like many children, young Estellita loved to collect butterflies. And she had a wonderful place for the pursuit: her grandparents’ Pennsylvania farm, where she spent much of her childhood in the 1940s. But unlike most children, Estellita had someone who could teach her about the butterflies she collected: her grandmother, the remarkable �ֲ���ý graduate Stella James Sims, Class of 1897.

A Black woman who traveled from West Virginia to Maine to attend �ֲ���ý — becoming the college’s first female Black graduate — Stella James Sims was a career science educator who, in the early 1900s, deepened the reputation of a historically Black college in West Virginia as a leading teachers college.

In addition to teaching a range of science courses and serving as dean of women during her 28-year career at Bluefield State College, James Sims was the wife of the Bluefield president, helping her husband bring notable Black leaders to campus, all while raising five children. She was also an officer in the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools.

She is remembered as a science teacher who inspired others to follow her path as a teacher. “I can remember how her love of biology came out,” recalled her granddaughter, Estellita Gonzales Rainwater-August, for a �ֲ���ý oral history in 2006. “I can remember her taking the time to take out the books and tell me what the butterflies all were and how they evolved.”

Stella James Sims’ name and legacy have a new prominence at �ֲ���ý these days with the appointment of Paula Schlax as the inaugural Stella James Sims Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

In August, speaking to a small gathering held in the Schlax lab in Bonney Science Center, following a ribbon-cutting to open the building, Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill explained that the Sims professorship “honors a faculty member whose contributions to biochemistry, accomplishments as a pedagogue, achievements as a researcher, and effectiveness as a leader have enriched STEM at �ֲ���ý and the college as a whole.”

Before Stella Sims traveled north to �ֲ���ý, in 1893, she did college preparatory studies at Storer College, a historically Black school, now closed, located in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. Linking the two schools was �ֲ���ý founder and Freewill Baptist leader Oren Cheney. In 1867, Cheney encouraged Maine philanthropist John Storer to make a $10,000 gift that enabled an erstwhile Harpers Ferry primary school to evolve into a college to train much-needed Black teachers.

At �ֲ���ý, James took courses in mathematics, botany, ornithology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and geology. She received second honors in physics, earning a spot to speak at her Commencement, on July 1, 1897. Considering that only 390 Black students had earned a college degree from a predominantly white U.S. college by 1900, according to W.E.B. Dubois, James’ achievement, of a Southern Black woman receiving a science degree from a Northern, white-founded college, is distinctive, if not unique.

By graduation, James’ abilities as a public communicator were already established, as evidenced by essays in The �ֲ���ý Student marked by precision and boldly practical thinking. In one essay, she wrote of the manifold significance of Harpers Ferry. This geological wonder, she wrote, is a Gibraltar-like formation “lying somewhere between the present and the past.” She refers to John Brown’s historic 1859 uprising there, intended to bring on abolition — “the first blow against slavery, and at Charlestown its first martyr was tried and hung.”

In another �ֲ���ý Student essay, “Manual Training,” Sims brilliantly anticipated the tension between vocational and college-prep education at the secondary level. “Shall the manual laborers finish a preparatory collegiate course — for the public and fitting schools tend toward this end — and then begin the training of their life work?” she asked.

By “manual training,” Sims did not mean “digging ditches, hodding brick, washing, and the like.” Instead, she was thinking about skilled, hands-on work, which “is not, [and] neither can be, independent of intellectual training, although we try to draw a line between manual and intellectual labor.”

She argued that scientists like James Watt and Isaac Newton called on their manual and mechanical skills, their practical ways of knowing the world, as much as their intellectual heft to make their discoveries. She reasoned that infusing manual labor into school curricula strengthened intellectual development by “cultivating exactness, keenness of observation, and bringing us in contact with the practical and concrete, rather than the theoretical and abstract.”

Upon graduating from �ֲ���ý, James returned to the South. She taught science and physics at Virginia Seminary, now Virginia University of Lynchburg, and at Storer. In 1901, she married a fellow Storer graduate, Robert P. Sims, who had earned his degree at Michigan’s Hillsdale College, which, like �ֲ���ý, had been founded by Freewill Baptists. They had known each other for years at that point: A photograph of Stella at Storer in 1893 shows Robert Sims standing behind her.

Perhaps reflecting ideas about education that Stella James Sims articulated while at �ֲ���ý, Bluefield emphasized both vocational and academic coursework.

In 1906, she joined the faculty at what was then called Bluefield Colored Institute, where Robert had been appointed president, a school founded to educate children of Black coal miners in the region, and had by then evolved into a school to educate teachers. (Yet another marker of the Storer–�ֲ���ý connection is the fact that Robert Sims’ predecessor at Bluefield was Hamilton Hatter, �ֲ���ý Class of 1888, who taught at Storer before becoming Bluefield’s first president.)

The Bluefield setting was beautiful, a10-acre campus 2,700 feet above sea level at the base of the Stoney Ridge Mountain. About half the campus was used for growing fruits: apples, cherries, peaches, grapes, raspberries, and strawberries. “All the work of tree planing, fruit culture, and vegetable production is performed by the students under the watchful eye of the principal.”

Perhaps reflecting ideas about practical education that James Sims had articulated while at �ֲ���ý, Bluefield emphasized both vocational and academic coursework.

“In addition to the regular courses of study usually pursued in a school of this character, we are aiming to give special attention to the manual arts and certain kinds of handicraft,” noted a report to the state by the Bluefield board of trustees in 1907. The goal of a Bluefield education, they said, was to prepare Black students “to become part of that higher citizenship for which the state strives, and that they may be a part of that intellectual life which should keep pace with the material development of the state.”

At Bluefield, James Sims taught a range of biology, botany, and zoology courses. In keeping with her �ֲ���ý writings, she encouraged her students to conduct hands-on fieldwork. Her stated goals included “awakening an interest in the pupil for nature and its workings.”

Already well known for its teacher-education curriculum, Bluefield was expanding in size in the early 1900s, adding 22 acres and a new classroom building, and in scope, adding offerings in business administration, home economics, and education. “Prof. and Mrs. Sims…are really building an institution that will occupy a large place in the educational and social well being of the community,” reported the local newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, in August 1925.

By 1931, the school was renamed Bluefield State Teachers College. “Much of the success of the entire program [at Bluefield] was due to the teaching personnel,” wrote Charles Ambeler in A History of Education in West Virginia from Early Colonial Times to 1949. And “among the most effective teachers,” he wrote, was James Sims.

Various sources indicate that Robert Sims, no doubt aided and abetted by Stella, worked to bring leading figures in Black culture to campus, helping Bluefield to achieve “recognition as a center of African American culture,” according to New Life for Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

W.E.B. Dubois twice spoke at Bluefield, including a 1927 visit, where he gave addresses on “Negro Art and Literature” and “Russia.” In 1930, Marian Anderson sang at the downtown Granada Theater. The record shows that James Sims kept up with changes in the teaching profession. As an officer for the West Virginia chapter of the National Association of Teachers in Colored Schools, James Sims contributed an article to the association’s publication, The Bulletin, discussing the role of the parent as the focus of childhood education moved from the home to public schools.

She and Robert Sims retired to their farm in Perkiomenville, Pa., in 1934; he died in 1944. And Bluefield State College? It’s still classified as a historically Black college, though its enrollment is now 86 percent white.

James Reese, the longtime �ֲ���ý dean, has a deeply held interest in the life of Stella James Sims. (As has Professor of Physics John Smedley, whose investigations have uncovered many details included in this story.)

Reese once visited Harpers Ferry to learn more about her life. There, he met one of Sims’ former students, then in her 90s, who vividly recalled “Miss Sims.” The woman, learning that her former teacher went to �ֲ���ý, said, “Oh, well, that must be why her standards were so high.” She lived to be 88. Her grave is in Harpers Ferry, that spot she described as “lying somewhere between the present and the past.” At �ֲ���ý, her name is now tied to the future of scientific study

They edited The �ֲ���ý Student and led the debate team. They taught, discovered, wrote, organized, and advocated. They spoke out against racism at home and discrimination and secrecy around the world.

During Black History Month, we shared on �ֲ���ý social media channels the stories of six African American alumni from �ֲ���ý’ past — famous firsts, national leaders, and unsung figures whose lives and legacies, of course, reverberate beyond February.

Henry Chandler, Class of 1874

The college’s first African American students were recruited personally by �ֲ���ý founder Oren B. Cheney, including Henry W. Chandler of Bath, Maine, the college’s first African American graduate, in 1874.

After college, he earned a law degree from Howard University, then practiced law in Florida; he also edited The Ocala Republican and The Plain Dealer newspapers. In 1880, Chandler was elected to the Florida state senate and held office for two terms.

Stella James, Class of 1897

In 1897, Stella James became the first African American woman to graduate from �ֲ���ý.

Born in Washington, D.C., she graduated from the historically black Storer School (later Storer College), an institution founded with the help of �ֲ���ý founder Oren Cheney.

At �ֲ���ý, she wrote for the school newspaper and, at graduation, earned second honor in physics (students did not major in subjects as we know it today).

After her graduation, she taught science and physics at Storer, Virginia Seminary, and Bluefield State College. She was a member of the National Society for Black Physicists.

Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920

A giant of the civil rights movement in the U.S., Benjamin E. Mays was known as “the schoolmaster of the movement” for teaching and inspiring a generation of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., who called Mays “my spiritual mentor and my intellectual father.”

Mays delivered King’s final eulogy on April 9, 1968.

Mays’ statement that �ֲ���ý  made it “possible for me to emancipate myself, to accept with dignity my own worth as a free man,” was incorporated into the �ֲ���ý mission statement.

In November 2017, his hometown community in Greenwood County, S.C., erected a statue of Mays.

John Davis, Class of 1926

Journalist, intellectual, and political organizer John Preston Davis made his name in the Harlem Renaissance and emerged as a powerful voice challenging racist federal programs during the Depression.

At �ֲ���ý, he was a formidable debater, yet was denied membership in Delta Sigma Rho, a national honorary debating fraternity, because he was black. �ֲ���ý fought this racist policy but was unsuccessful until DSR changed its exclusionary policy years later.

After graduation, Davis succeeded W.E.B. Du Bois as the literary editor of The Crisis. Working with such Harlem Renaissance authors as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, among others, he produced Fire!!, a magazine devoted to young African American artists.

He earned a law degree from Harvard, and in 1935 co-founded the influential National Negro Congress, a major civil rights coalition that was active in the late 1930s and 1940s. Under Davis, the NNC exposed “prejudicial assumptions that underlay many of the ostensibly liberal New Deal reforms,” according to �ֲ���ý history professor Hilmar Jensen.

Davis’ work with NNC “directly inspired” the next generation of civil rights leaders to found organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

William Worthy, Class of 1942

William Worthy ’42 was a fearless, globetrotting journalist who spent a career telling Americans “what’s going on in the world in their name.”

He reported from some of the hardest places for Americans to get to during the Cold War, including the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, as well as from post-revolutionary Iran, all the while being hounded by the U.S. State Department, the FBI, and the CIA, who tried to stop his reporting; he was also red-baited in the U.S. Senate.

In fact, a legal battle involving Worthy’s trip to Cuba inspired “The Ballad of William Worthy,” by folk singer Phil Ochs.

At his death, said that Worthy was a “reporter drawn to forbidden datelines.”

Peter Gomes, Class of 1965

In 1991, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes ’65 took to the steps of Widener Library at Harvard to declare that he was “a Christian who happens as well to be gay,” an act of coming-out in response to gay bashing on campus.

A prominent national figure considered one of America’s greatest preachers, Gomes was Harvard’s Pusey Minister of Memorial Church and, during the last 20 years of his life, a prolific author and religious voice who advocated for a more inclusive interpretation of the Bible.

Gomes died in 2011; Harvard president Drew Faust said Gomes was “a living symbol of courage and conviction.”

In 2012, �ֲ���ý named the college chapel in Gomes’ memory.

As �ֲ���ý College begins a yearlong celebration of the 25th anniversary of its Edmund S. Muskie Archives, two panel discussions in May examine topics close to the late U.S. Sen. Muskie and to the college itself.

Muskie, a member of the college’s class of 1936, was a Maine governor, U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of state whose achievements included landmark environmental legislation. The changing meanings of Earth Day are at issue in a panel discussion, co-sponsored by the Office of Sustainability and featuring an original Earth Day organizer, at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 6, in the Muskie Archives, 70 Campus Ave.

A panel the following week explores issues around diversity at �ֲ���ý. A Diverse History — Race, Class and Gender at �ֲ���ý College in the 19th Century takes place at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 12, also in the archives.

Both events are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact 207-786-6354 or this muskie@bates.edu.

Dedicated in 1985, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library preserves materials documenting the history and experience of the college.

Holdings include a nationally significant body of materials relating to Muskie, including an important oral history and documentary collection that is one of the largest representing a non-presidential U.S. political figure.

The panel discussion Earth Day: Then and Now will look at the evolution of Earth Day from its founding 40 years ago, a time when environmentalism was considered radical, to its current role as a mainstream celebration. Panelists include:

Barbara Reid Alexander, midwestern coordinator for the inaugural ;

Leon Billings, staff director of the Senate subcommittee that produced the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, and later Muskie’s chief of staff;

Don Hudson, president of the in Wiscasset;

and �ֲ���ý senior Emily Grady. She will present a paper written by Katrina Lacher, a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma, about the mid-20th-century perception of environmentalism as a radical movement. Lacher, who is unable to attend the panel discussion, used the Muskie Papers extensively last summer to research FBI surveillance of the first Earth Day and Muskie as a result of his involvement with the early environmental movement.

Professor of Economics Lynne Lewis will moderate.

In addition, a short silent film of Muskie speaking on the original Earth Day celebration in Philadelphia will be shown.

In its review of diversity at �ֲ���ý, the May 12 panel will draw upon early photographs, the papers of �ֲ���ý’ founding fathers and oral histories about the first African American woman to graduate from the college. The panelists are:

Margaret Creighton, a �ֲ���ý history professor, who will moderate the discussion;

Bill Hiss, �ֲ���ý’ executive director for international advancement, who will talk about diversity in the context of the college’s early history;

John Smedley, a physics professor who will profile Stella James, a physics major in the class of 1897 who was the first African American woman to graduate from �ֲ���ý;

and Tim Larson, of the �ֲ���ý class of 2005, who for his senior thesis used the early records of �ֲ���ý to examine the progressive tradition at the college from 1855 to 1877 (the end of Reconstruction) in regard to race, class and gender.