Fort Valley State University

At a time when women are taking center stage in society and receiving accolades for their hard work comes a book about their counterparts from the past who accomplished grand feats but received little notice. The book, tentatively titled “Possible Lives: Southern Women in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” chronicles the lives of 14 American women such as Florence Johnson Hunt, who aided her husband in building Fort Valley High and Industrial School, which later became Fort Valley State University. “Even though Henry Alexander Hunt routinely gave her credit, this was taken as pro forma and recognition passed to him. He was famous, and she was not,” said Dr. Fred van Hartesveldt, one of the book’s contributors and chair of the FVSU Department of History, Geography, Political Sciences and Criminal Justice.
The book, a collection of essays, will be published by The University Press of Florida in Fall 2009 and is edited by President Larry E. Rivers and Dr. Canter Brown Jr., special assistant and counsel to the president. Dr. Terrance Smith, vice president of student affairs, Dr. Dawn Heard-Clark, assistant professor of history, Dr. vanHartesveldt and professors from the University of Georgia, Florida A & M University, the University of Florida, the University of Central Florida, Florida Southern College, the Historical Association of Southern Florida, the University of North Florida and Wofford College contributed to the project.
“Dr. Brown and I conceived this collection of essays as a way to illustrate important aspects about the lives of southern women,” said Dr. Rivers, who contributed an essay on medical missionary Louise Cecilia Fleming. Fleming, sponsored by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, was the first female Baptist missionary to serve in the Congo. “We wanted people to know that women accomplished much more in the public sphere during the late 1800s and early 1900s than they are credited with and also that it’s possible to research their lives.” Rivers, Brown and the University Press of Florida finalized the publication contract today.