| Basic Search Manuscript Search | Advanced Search | Online Archives | Help | ||||||||||||
Biography/History:
Hilda Clifford Flowers was born on April 8, 1910, in Pennsylvania. She attended Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, where she completed the tenth grade. She married Herbert Wilson, and the couple remained in Philadelphia. Herbert Wilson worked for the United States Postal Service, and Hilda Wilson worked for the Marine Corps Supply Activity (Department of the Navy) as a sewing machine operator until 1959. In 1958, she took evening courses in bookkeeping and accounting in Philadelphia. In the summer of 1971, she earned her general education diploma and attended classes at Tougaloo College. Hilda and Herbert Wilson had at least two children, Herbert Wilson, Jr., and Geraldine L. Wilson. Herbert Wilson died around 1962.
In Philadelphia, Wilson was an active member of St. Augustine’s Church of the Covenant. She was finance chair of the Women’s Auxiliary and superintendent of the primary department of the church school from 1955 until 1961. She was also active in the West Philadelphia Civic League and the Mothers Club of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority.
In 1963, she became administrative secretary for the Philadelphia chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In this position, she supervised the office, coordinated volunteers and fundraising, and spoke to groups at colleges and churches. She then worked as secretary for the Philadelphia Tutorial Project.
In 1964, Wilson’s daughter, Geraldine, worked with SNCC in the Mississippi Delta and in Albany, Georgia, to establish educational programs for young children. She was also a co-founder of the Mississippi Institute for Early Childhood Education. Geraldine left Mississippi in 1966 and moved to New York. In 1973, she became director of the Regional Training Office for Head Start Programs at New York University.
Following her daughter’s work in the Delta, Hilda Wilson went to Mississippi in 1966, where she worked as a trainer for the Poor People’s Corporation (PPC), teaching sewing and bookkeeping. By 1967, she had settled permanently in Jackson. Wilson next worked for the Friends of Children of Mississippi (FCM). She began as a field consultant and by 1970 was the administrative assistant to the pre-school education associate director. In 1971, she took over the position of pre-school education associate director, coordinating the training of preschool teachers and developing curricula. From 1972 to 1974, she served as parent involvement coordinator, working with center committees and policy committees on which parents served as advisors. She was also on the advisory board of the Mississippi Institute for Early Childhood Education. Wilson resigned from FCM in 1973.
Wilson briefly owned and operated Clifford’s House of Gifts, a small business in Jackson. She was also a member of the Jackson chapter of the Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and a board member of Operation Shoestring. She died in November 1975 in Hinds County, Mississippi.
The Poor People’s Corporation grew out of civil rights activists’ efforts to focus on combating poverty among African Americans following successful voter registration efforts in 1964. SNCC activist Jesse Morris began PPC in 1965 to support self-help projects among low-income groups, particularly displaced sharecroppers. PPC provided loans, training in the production of crafts, and marketing networks. Liberty House, where crafts made by PPC members were sold, operated stores in New York City and Jackson.
Friends of Children of Mississippi grew out of the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM), a groundbreaking Head Start program. CDGM began in 1965 when Tom Levin, a psychoanalyst who had participated in Freedom Summer, wanted to continue the work of the freedom schools by setting up preschools, run by parents, to educate the children of poor people in Mississippi. While SNCC did not officially endorse the project, many individual SNCC activists built support for it in communities where they had worked on voter registration and freedom school programs. CDGM was seen not only as a way to educate young children, but also as a means of organizing communities and providing jobs for local people. It was run without any county or state funds, but in 1965 received a grant from the United States Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which was initiating Project Head Start as part of a federal anti-poverty program.
Elected officials in Mississippi, however, objected to federal funding being controlled by civil rights workers, particularly those from SNCC. Senator John Stennis led opposition to CDGM, and OEO responded to the pressure by withdrawing funding from CDGM and awarding it to a recently established group, Mississippi Action for Progress (MAP) in 1966. Following this action, a group of parents and CDGM staff members formed Friends of Children of Mississippi to operate the former CDGM centers on a volunteer basis as they worked to regain federal funding. While limited funding was restored to CDGM in December 1966, the OEO excluded five counties from CDGM’s jurisdiction. Representatives from four of the excluded counties—Clarke, Greene, Humphreys, and Wayne—decided to continue operating their centers voluntarily rather than affiliate with MAP. They retained the name Friends of Children of Mississippi and set up a formal organization. In 1967, FCM received a grant from the Field Foundation to maintain its centers on a temporary basis, and received its first OEO grant in the spring of 1968. FCM strongly emphasized black awareness curricula and involvement of parents and community members in running Head Start centers. It continues to operate Head Start programs across the state.
Scope and Content:
The collection documents the life and career of Hilda Wilson, and includes personal and financial records, Head Start records, and a range of items relating to the civil rights and black power movements in Jackson, Mississippi, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The collection is divided into six series: Head Start records; Philadelphia Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee records; Poor People’s Corporation records; diaries and calendars; printed material; and personal papers. Key topics covered by the collection include: Head Start programs; Friends of Children of Mississippi; the Child Development Group of Mississippi; the study and teaching of African-American history; early childhood education; and the Poor People’s Corporation.
The Head Start series includes funding proposals from the Child Development Group of Mississippi and records of Friends of Children of Mississippi, including correspondence, reports, orientation and training guides, and classroom materials. This series provides key documentation of FCM’s development following its first OEO grant and of its emphasis on introducing black awareness into the pre-school curriculum. It also contains materials from a range of organizations that supported Head Start programs.
The Philadelphia Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee series consists of one folder with three incoming letters written while Hilda Wilson was secretary, as well as printed material about SNCC and the Mississippi Project. The Poor People’s Corporation series consists of one folder of news releases and printed material, as well as four incoming letters and Hilda Wilson’s notes on sewing cooperatives.
The diaries and calendars series contains two of Hilda Wilson’s diaries with a limited number of entries documenting her time working with Philadelphia SNCC and her arrival in Mississippi in 1966. The printed material series documents Wilson’s interests in black consciousness and civil rights. The personal papers series contains biographical information as well as Wilson’s financial records.
Series Identification:
This series is organized into the following subseries.
1.1. Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) Records. 1966-1967; n.d. 2 folders, 1 binder.
This subseries contains a 1966 proposal by CDGM for funding from OEO. It also contains CDGM enrollment and survey forms, as well as two CDGM booklets, “From the Ground Up” and “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?”
Box 1, binder
Box 1, folders 1-2
This subseries documents FCM’s early years, containing correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, funding proposals, curriculum support materials, operating manuals, administrative files, and orientation booklets. The records pertain primarily to the pre-school education department and the parental involvement program. Some correspondence is from Marvin Hogan, who became FCM executive director in 1969. Included in this series are a paper entitled “Afro-American History for FCM Parents and Teachers” by Hilda Wilson, a “Report to County Staff on Black Awareness” by Geraldine Wilson, and a report concerning a workshop on black history and consciousness led by Alice Walker (formerly Alice Walker Leventhal). Boxes 2 and 3 contain funding proposals to OEO. Folders in Box 4 are arranged alphabetically by subject and/or title. Box 7 contains oversize items, including workshop presentations.
Box 2, binder
Box 3, folder 1
Box 4, folders 1-35
Box 7, folders 1-2
1.3. Head Start Support Organization Records. 1969-1973; n.d. 8 folders.
This subseries contains files and printed material relating to organizations that supported Head Start, early childhood education, and parental involvement. Box 4 includes printed material of the Demonstration and Research Center for Early Education and the Mississippi Federation of Child Development Centers. Box 5 contains printed material relating to the Mississippi Head Start Training Coordinating Council and the Mississippi Parents Association. It also includes advisory board materials of the Mississippi Institute for Early Childhood Education.
Box 4, folders 36-39
Box 5, folders 1-4
This series contains printed material and correspondence relating to SNCC and the friends of SNCC during the time that Wilson served as its secretary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Box 5, folder 5
This series contains records of PPC while Wilson served as a trainer in the Mississippi Delta. It includes promotional material as well as Wilson’s notes on sewing groups.
Box 5, folder 6
This series contains two of Wilson’s diaries. Although she did not make frequent entries, they provide a glimpse of her activities with SNCC and her initial reactions upon arriving in Mississippi to work with PPC. This series also contains pages of three wall calendars that document Wilson’s work at FCM.
Box 5, folder 7: diaries, 1965-1966.
Box 5, folder 8: calendar pages, 1970; 1973.
This series contains printed items and clippings collected by Hilda and Geraldine Wilson that reflect their interests in civil rights, black power, and the teaching of African-American history. It especially documents a number of community-based initiatives to introduce black awareness into public schools and community education programs in New York City and Philadelphia. Materials relating to Mississippi include the International African Prisoners of War Solidarity Day, the Committee for Change, and Project Assist/Action. Folders within this series are arranged alphabetically by subject and/or title.
Box 5, folders 9-38
This series is organized into the following subseries.
6.1. Correspondence. 1966-1967; n.d. 2 folders.
This subseries contains Hilda Wilson’s personal correspondence, including notes from friends and letters concerning her personal real estate and finances.
Box 5, folders 39-40
6.2. Biographical Files. 1957-1959; 1962; 1971; 1973; n.d. 3 folders.
This subseries contains records of Wilson’s education, including her resume, GED certificate, and course materials, correspondence related to her husband’s estate, and personal ephemera, such as church bulletins and business cards.
Box 5, folders 41-43
6.3. Photograph. n.d. 1 folder.
This subseries consists of one autographed photograph of Leontyne Price.
Box 5, folder 44
6.4. Financial Records. 1950; 1959; 1962; 1965-1975; n.d. 25 folders.
This subseries consists of Wilson’s personal financial records as well as those of her business, Clifford’s House of Gifts. Included in the series are pay stubs from SNCC and FCM.
Box 6, folders 1-25
6.5. Printed Material. 1959; 1963-1968; 1972; 1975. 1 folder.
This subseries contains printed material collected by Wilson relating to her personal affairs, including consumer magazines, federal employee health benefits program information, and bulk mail.
Box 6, folder 26