Susanna coleman

         On February 2, 1886, Susanna Coleman received instructions to appear in the Anoka High School Principal’s office at 9 a.m. the following morning. A week later, the Anoka Union started a conversation that would last a month in the local newspapers with just five scant lines: “Considerable talk is being indulged in certain quarters over Prof. Cummings punishing a negro female pupil named Coleman. It is reported that more force was used than was necessary.”

         The Coleman family wasn’t new to the City of Anoka, but few records exist about their lives before moving to the area. The information available to researchers includes newspaper accounts, census records, and Susanna’s mother, Betsey’s (Nancy Elizabeth) obituary in the Anoka Herald in 1895. The newspaper noted that Betsey “was taken from her mother when only four years old and sold” into slavery, where she eventually became “the property of a hotel keeper in Missouri.” Sometime after the Civil War, Betsey moved to Anoka with her son and married her second husband, William Coleman. By 1880, the family household included parents William and Betsey, their daughters Zephie, Susanna, and Mary, and Betsey’s son and daughter-in-law William and Mary Butler. The father, William, worked as a teamster and hostler while Betsey kept house and worked as a wash woman.

Following the family through historical records becomes confusing for several reasons. Not only do their ages vary depending on the source by 25-35 years, but Betsey, according to the census, went from literate in 1870 to illiterate in 1880. Further contradiction exists in a letter to the editor from her, printed in 1886. Ultimately, the sources we can find about the family are all through the lens of a second person—the census taker or newspaper editor, rather than the family themselves.

Accounts of the incident varied. Susanna’s mother, Betsey Coleman, responded publicly by writing an eloquent letter to the Union -- an act of advocacy at a time when society often dismissed Black women’s voices.  According to the letter, Susanna’s “awful crime” was chewing a piece of paper, and as punishment, Cummings hit her hands with a horsewhip until they bled. The Herald responded on February 20 with derision to the Union’s story, closing their article by saying, “let it [the Union] be careful to retain a little common sense.”

Principal Cummings didn’t dispute that he whipped Susanna. In a response printed in the Union, he clarified that “Mrs. Coleman’s daughter was moderately whipped” for “repeated and persistent disobedience” [italics original to the text]. He reported he didn’t notice drawing any blood.  The Herald allied with the Professor and his discipline of “a few small strokes on each hand from a small riding whip.”

Granville Pease, editor of the Anoka Union, spearheaded this community conversation by giving column inches to each party and adding his opinions on corporal punishment in lengthy editorials. He calls it “a relic of barbarism” and declares he has “the severest censure for any teacher who whips any pupil in our public school.” While Alvin Eastman, editor of the competing Anoka Herald, disagreed with the stir the article caused. This resulted in the editors sniping back and forth at each other over their respective coverage. Eastman printed “The editor of the Union has had his sympathies unduly excited by a whipping incident...let it be careful to retain a little common sense.” and in their next issue Granville responded in the Union “Let the Herald understand that it will never be charged with having any common sense as long as it tries to excuse Prof. Cummings…”

Susanna’s story doesn’t end with this one day when she was 14, but what we know of her life is sparse. It’s unclear if she went past the 8th grade or attended High School, but by 1895, she was still living in Anoka and was working as a servant for an unknown local family. By 1900, she had found work as a dressmaker and lived in Minneapolis with her sisters and brother-in-law. When, where, and how she passed away is also a mystery, but her mother and half-brother are buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Anoka.

Because of his status as a man and a white man, there is a little more information about the Principal in this story. Jothamn Henry Cummings graduated from Harvard in 1870. From there, he worked as a teacher and Principal in Connecticut, Indiana, and Wisconsin before he moved to Anoka and took the position of Principal here in 1883. While Granville Pease called out his behavior in the newspaper and alluded to hearing from more members in the community about Cummings’ behavior, Cummings stayed in his position for another two to three years. By 1889, he was teaching in Moorehead and eventually stepped away due to his increasing hearing loss.

Susanna’s story challenges the power of print and raises questions about the value of relationships, and defiance vs. compliance. The social norms and laws of the 19th century dictated that women, especially Black women and girls, occupied a negligible and often invisible role. By printing Susanna’s story in the newspaper, Pease validated her experience and challenged the community’s assumptions.

At the same time, curriculum authors produced classroom materials advocating for the continuation of white supremacy. Students like Susanna used these textbooks to shape their understanding of the world. A Geography textbook in the Anoka County History Center collections is titled “Warren’s Common School Geography,” published in 1880 and used in Anoka schools. Susanna’s peers, and even likely Susanna herself, used this textbook in their studies. In its pages, the textbook teaches that “Mankind is divided into five varieties, or races, differing from each other by certain characteristic features. 1. The Caucasian, or White race.  - Most of the nations of Europe and America belong to this race. The Caucasian race is superior to all others in intelligence, energy, and courage.”