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. Katherine taught during the week; Frank pursued a variety of business opportunities, including drilling oil wells and government appointments. Sundays were spent at church, usually followed by a fried chicken lunch and then visiting neighbors. “I don’t know of anyone that didn’t love her,” says Kay Tolbert Buckland. “I can remember at Christmastime my father would take me and we would go and deliver presents … there in Shreveport because [all the recipients] were all good friends of my grandmother. And my grandmother didn’t have any money. She was a schoolteacher! But they all wanted to be her friend.” French was a “friend of the wealthiest people and the poorest people”: “They all loved her.”36
As noted, French often played hostess to a wide range of people in her home. A favorite tradition was the Christmas morning eggnog party. French made a brew, imported from her native Kentucky, called “Henry Clay eggnog.” The recipe involved two dozen eggs, a lot of milk, and a lot of cream plus a quart of bourbon and a quart of rum. Her teetotalist guests “would come to her eggnog party, not knowing all the booze that was in the eggnog”: “They … never said a thing about it.” These guests apparently remained blissfully ignorant of the alcohol-induced cause of their early morning Christmas cheer.37
French kept in contact with Science Hill Academy, the school that had opened so many doors for her. Her high regard for Science Hill was genuine, evidenced by the fact that she sent her own daughter there. In 1925, the school held a centennial celebration. French was chosen from among hundreds of graduates to represent students from the Wiley Poynter years. Her speech honored him, reflected her ongoing passion for opening up educational possibilities for women, and also paid homage to Poynter’s wife and successor, Clara. “Tonight,” she declared, “I come to place two wreaths upon two brows, upon the one a crown of service for seventeen years of marvelous beginnings; upon the other a crown for thirty-nine years of exampled carrying-on.”38
French attained local recognition in the Shreveport community on a number of counts, many of which she appears to have engineered herself. She was mentioned frequently in the Shreveport Times for her work with the Woman’s Department Club. The paper pointedly uses her proper title in a 1920 article: “And by the way, for our everyday saying, she is our friend, Mrs. French, but whenever she is doing any work along the lines for which she received her degree, she has been asked to use the title bestowed upon her and be called Dr. Katherine Jackson French.”39 (Whoever “asked” her is not stated.) In 1930, the paper began to publish her weekly lectures. That same year, she is quoted in an article, “What Music Means to Me.”40 In 1933, she is the subject of a lengthy feature article: “The proud boast of Centenary college that its English department is unexcelled by any college in the entire South is supported among other reasons by the fact that it has been fortunate enough for 10 years to have identified with it one of the foremost English scholars in the entire country, Dr. Katherine Jackson French.” The article refers to her work in the British Museum and mentions hobnobbing with education leaders at the Columbia University Library during summers off. It also makes a point of noting that French had met distinguished speakers and performers through the Woman’s Department Club and that with many “she has had delightful associations.”41 This collection of famous acquaintances is corroborated by her granddaughter, who remembers going to a Broadway play when she was a child and being introduced to Richard Rodgers, a friend of her grandmother’s.42
Not surprisingly, French became active in the early organizational efforts of both the Shreveport and the state chapters of the AAUW. In March 1941, nine months before Pearl Harbor, she was elected president of the Louisiana chapter. Immediately following her election, she and her secretary-treasurer, Mrs. C. L. Mooney (also of Shreveport), traveled to Alexandria for the tenth state convention. The focus of the convention was “the place of women in the defense program.” French also traveled to the national convention in Cincinnati in May, that year’s theme being summed up in the statement: “The American Cause is again the cause of the creative human spirit, which no enemy has ever overcome.”43
At