Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen

Biographical Database of Black Women Suffragists

Biography of Clarissa Minnie Thompson Allen, 1859-1941

By Julianne Sersen and Hannah Tabachki, undergraduates, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Clarissa Minnie Thompson was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1859 or 1860, to a thriving middle-class African American family. The eldest of nine children, she grew up during the years of tumult and opportunity following the Civil War. Her father, Samuel Benjamin Thompson, set an example of high achievement as a justice of the peace and a state senator. Her mother, Eliza Henrietta Montgomery, was a popular socialite. Because of some favorable conditions for the African American community in the South during Reconstruction, Thompson was able to attend several schools and received a good education. Her siblings also took advantage of these opportunities. Her brother became a highly acclaimed physician. Thompson's experiences during these years laid the foundation for her life's work as an educator, author, and poet, and a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Thompson attended Howard School before she enrolled at South Carolina State Normal School, a branch of South Carolina University. She graduated as one of eight African-American females in 1877. When Democrats regained power in the state legislature that same year, they closed the school shortly after Thompson's graduation, so hers was both the first and last graduating class. During her career, Thompson taught at several schools in South Carolina, as well as in Texas. She held positions at Howard School, Poplar Grove School in Abbeville, South Carolina, Allen University in Columbia, SC, and in various public schools in Texas. After her first three years in Texas, Thompson furthered her professional career by attaining a position as the first assistant at the Fort Worth City School. It is likely that she taught at Fort Worth's historic I.M. Terrell High School, the first and only all-black high school in the county, beginning in 1882.

 

In this photo are the eight African-American women who were part of both the first and last class to graduate from South Carolina State Normal school. Thompson is pictured second from the right. (Photo credit: Binette, Peggy. "Deconstructing Reconstruction." Apr. 14, 2016
http://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2016/04/uofsc_symposium_explores_reconstruction_era.php#.WqewH5M-dmC)

As a writer, Thompson authored short stories and poetry. As a young girl still in school, she she had written several essays that appeared in the Christian Recorder. She also wrote fictional stories based on the lives of actual wealthy African-American families. The Boston Advocate serialized one of her best known stories, Treading the Winepress; or, A Mountain of Misfortune, in 1885 and 1886. Thompson also published her poetry and letters for African American newspapers in Texas under the pseudonym Minnie Myrtle. In depicting the struggles her characters, Thompson found a way to both acknowledge and celebrate positive aspects of African American womanhood through her literary work.

Thompson also served as an active member of the Colored Division of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union during her years in Texas, an organization that endorsed woman suffrage and numerous progressive causes related to welfare and public health. Thompson spent the duration of her career and her adult life stressing the importance of education for women, particularly African American. Through her teaching career, writing, and organizational ties, Thompson committed herself to ensuring that African American women would receive better opportunities than they had in the past.

Thompson appears only sporadically in the public record from the 1890s on. She married a Texas physician, William A. Allen around 1897. The couple had no children.

She lived apart from her husband at the time of the 1900 census, which lists her as the head of a household that included her younger sister (who was also a teacher), a cousin, and a boarder. By the time she reached her 80s, she had retired from teaching and lived in Rockdale, Texas with her still-practicing husband. She died in 1941 at the approximate age of 82.

 

Image source: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-7558-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Sources:

Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. Writing African American Women.

Binette, Peggy. "Deconstructing Reconstruction." Apr. 14, 2016
http://www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/2016/04/uofsc_symposium_explores_reconstruction_era.php#.WqewH5M-dmC

Haley, James T. Afro-American Encyclopedia: Or, the Thoughts, Doings, and Sayings of the Race.

Gilmore, Courtney. "The Color of Texas Classrooms & The First Black High School in Fort

Worth." NBCDFW.com. Feb. 28, 2017. https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/The-Color-of-Texas-Classrooms-And-the-1st-Black-High-School-in-Fort-Worth-414953653.html

Majors, Monroe Alphus. Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities.

Page, Yolanda Williams. Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. "Clarissa M. Thompson. Novelist, Educator, W.C.T.U. [Woman's Christian Temperance Union] Advocate, Poetess." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 13, 2018. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-7558-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

US National Archives. "1880 US Federal Census." HeritageQuest.

Wells, Jonathan Daniel. Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South.

Suggested Readings:

Beaulieu, Elizabeth Ann. Writing African American Women.

Haley, James T. Afro-American Encyclopedia: Or, the Thoughts, Doings, and Sayings of the Race.

Majors, Monroe Alphus. Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities. [LINK]

Page, Yolanda Williams. Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers

Wells, Jonathan Daniel. Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth-Century South.


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