ONE MYSTERY has been solved: What ever happened to J. C. Corbin? His name is a kind of standing footnote in every standard history of education in Arkansas:
Joseph Carter Corbin (1833-1911), founder of Branch Normal College, which would eventually become the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and chairman of the board of trustees of the Arkansas Industrial University, which would eventually become the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Not to mention his many other distinctions in Reconstruction Arkansas, a pivotal period that would be subject to as many re-interpretations and redesigns as any other historical watershed. But the institutions J.C. Corbin left behind are still with us, and his adventuresome life and times, and multiple talents, have been richly documented in the history he made. It’s his death, or rather burial place, that became the mystery. No one could find his grave.
No one till Gladys Turner-Finney, a graduate of UAPB herself, and a child of poverty herself. She was born in rural Jefferson County, and the woman would just not rest till she found the resting place of the man who had made her education possible. And not just hers, but the education of generations to come after J.C. Corbin had become only a name in the archives.
As every historical researcher knows, there is always a clue, a trace left behind, a key to the mystery. And she found it, following a dim trail to Chicago, Illinois, where, sure enough, J.C. Corbin is buried at the Forest Home Cemetery. Under a new headstone that includes the UAPB seal and thanks him for his “gift of education to countless generations.”
Thank you, Gladys Turner-Finney, and all the others you mobilized to dedicate that tombstone last week with due ceremony. And to let it be known that Arkansas doesn’t forget those who made us who we are.
Among those others attending the dedication was The Hon. Danny K. Davis, congressman from Illinois’ Seventh District, who gave the dedicatory address. He’s also a graduate of UAPB (Class of 1961). Descended from sharecroppers at Parkdale, Ark., he and his siblings were the first in the family able to get a college education-thanks to J.C. Corbin and the school he left behind.
“No black person in our town had a college degree when I was growing up,” the congressman remembers. “The idea of UAPB affording us the opportunity to go to school was just phenomenal.” Now he’s a product of that phenomenon. And he was there to testify to it at J.C. Corbin’s grave site, now that it’s been found by a loyal alumna and dedicated historian.
Educator, scholar, linguist, mathematician, musician and groundbreaking leader, J.C. Corbin was lost but now he’s found-thanks to the amazing grace of these grateful beneficiaries of his life. It was good to see his name in the news again,and wonder what he would have to say about Arkansas and specifically about education in Arkansas today.
WHAT would J.C. Corbin say about the children now being held hostage by failing schools in inner cities and out in the woods? Or the political correctness that keeps us from talking to one another directly about the poor and despised and how to open the gates of opportunity for them in this era. Would he favor reforms like charter schools and lower college tuitions? Would he want to clear away the layers of administrative deadwood that now cover what a college education is supposed to be about? Which would be J.C. Corbin’s priority-the students’ education or the administrators’ perks? The students’ welfare or that of the teachers’ unions? Would the students come first with him, or those with a vested interest in keeping The System just as it is?
This state needs a whole new generation of J.C. Corbins to replace the time-servers who think the status ever quo is just fine. And can be counted only to defend their own interests, not that of future generations-unlike J.C. Corbin.
The mystery of his grave site has been solved, but another awaits: What brought J.C. Corbin to Chicago toward the end of a rich, full and still not completely explored life? Never fear. Gladys Turner-Finney is working on that one, too.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 05/30/2013