Artwork Credit: Diaz, D. (2020) Caroline Still Anderson. Personally Commissioned by Loren Cahill.
Caroline Still Wiley Anderson spent her entire life healing African Americans using various interventions and measures. Caroline was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to William and Letitia Still. Her father was a prominent abolitionist that helped self-emancipated slaves on the Underground Railroad and wrote about their journeys in his book The Underground Railroad (Still, 1871). At the age sixteen, she moved to Oberlin, Ohio and attended Oberlin College where she was the only Black student in her class. At the age 19, the youngest student in her graduating class. Caroline moved back to Philadelphia, and on December 28, 1869 at the age 21 Caroline married a former Alabama slave, a man she met while attending school in Oberlin, Edward A. Wiley. Suddenly at 26, she found herself a widowed mother of two children. Shortly before her first husband, Edward Wiley, died, she had told him of her dissatisfaction with a domestic life. "I know it would be folly but I fully believe to her who has been received gifts it belongs to use them to the best of her ability," Caroline wrote in an 1873 letter, "and I feel that I possess a few …" She utilized her many gifts of intelligence, strength and conviction to become a medical professional for Black families as well as an institution builder in Black Philadelphian society. Caroline went on to attend Howard University Medical School for one term, and then transferred to the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1876. She interned at Boston’s New England Hospital for Women and Children. When she returned to Philadelphia in 1879, she became one of the state’s first Black female doctors. In 1880, Dr. Wiley remarried to a Doctor of Divinity, founder of Philadelphia’s Berean Presbyterian Church and minister Matthew Anderson. Caroline went on to become a co-founder of the Berean Dispensary, Berean Cottage, and Berean Manual Training and Industrial School. She spent 30 years as the school’s assistant principal and teacher of elocution, physiology, and hygiene offering entrepreneurial trade opportunities for recent migrants from the South. Anderson remained involved in a variety of community and professional organizations. I feel that it is of particular importance to uplift for the purpose of this project that she was the driving force behind establishing Philadelphia’s first Black Young Women’s Christian Association. Caroline truly committed her life to providing remedies for Blackgirls both socially, spiritually and spatially. Dr. Anderson transitioned in her home on June 2, 1919 in Philadelphia, from complications from the stroke she had years earlier, she was 71 years old. Lots of the institutions she built outlasted her. Berean Presbyterian Church is still in existence. Berean Manual Training and Industrial School that she poured herself into was functioning until 2012. Leaning into the Blackgirl methodology of Caroline herself, the following piece of writing is an experimental lesson plan.
Image Caption: Berean Institute in 1914 and 2008.
The Elements of Space
The lesson of the day class is to learn how to imagine another way. Through the following activities you will find a way to transport through time by first daring to dream big with your mind. First, I ask for you to see a space your community needs to be present and around so that their dream may also be found. Suspend what feels impossible and wait to speak until you feel safe. …. (Wait 2 mins)
Now say aloud what you want to create. (Instructor creates a dream list and makes sure all are included.)
Is your vision clear, Who is there? Who is not? Are resources abound? Are people bound by a clock? Once, you have clarified the specifics, the next step you must try to see is what steps can you make in your life right now to make your vision a reality? .... (Wait 2 mins.)
With our innervision in tow we are ready to grow together and through the new world that is in our view. List aloud the gifts you possess. Afterwards, return to the previous list and match and move folks who have things needed for others to improve. Once we have collated the list we can share our skills to put to the test and begin to measure our success.
Once you have connected with your classmates, note that there is one last task before the end of the day. This is an elocution course after all, we have critically thought we must also thoughtfully write and speak. Take the next ten minutes to freely write creatively about your space and theory of change. Don’t doubt yourself, feel dumb, erase what you say or complain. Keep writing even when you feel your thoughts are too incoherent to explain. (Wait 10 mins.)
Now everyone will speak aloud and share these words of their heart and the elements that their love spaces contain. (Instructor must make sure everyone reads aloud even if it's just one sentence of their work.)
Thank you for your courageousness, generosity, and commitment to make your dream accessible and simple to explain. Tomorrow, we will try again.
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