SPELMA N
THE VOICE
OF BLACK WOMANHOOD
SPOTLIGHT
Vol.3lNo.5
Atlanta, Georgia
January 1978
Mrs. Isabelle Stewart
A Catalyst Involved With Spelman
by Roxie F. Hughes
In between carting off her
sons to cub scout meetings and
piano lessons, and attending
various board meetings, Ms.
Isabelle Stewart is working on
a doctorate from the
University of Pennsylvania
and is always trying to find
solutions to problems in
education.
She has a long standing
reputation of active in
volvement in various
organizations, especially
those related to education.
Case in point:
Just before she and her
family left Philadelphia for
Atlanta last year, she vowed
never again to “make the mis
take” of getting too involved in
her children’s new school in
Atlanta. It seems that Mrs.
Stewart was very involved in
her children’s school in
Philadelphia, working volun
tarily on cpmmittees.
But once reaching Atlanta,
she could not ignore the pen
dulum which she said is “sw
inging to parental in
volvement” and is now an ac
tive board member of Trinity
School, her children’s new
school, located in northwest
Atlanta.
Even now Mrs. Stewart is
moving toward greater in
volvement in education as
Spelman’s First Lady. Ever
since she and her family
arrived at the Spelman com
munity a year and a half ago,
she has been learning the role
of the college president’s wife.
“And I have been figuring out
what my interpretation was
going to be,” she said.
“Traditionally, the wife of a
college president doesn’t work,
but Dr. Manley’s wife set the
tone that is compatible with
Spelman’s image,” she said,
“Spelman women are expected
to be achievers and to have a
career.”
Finding this way of thinking
to be compatible with hers she
said, “This means I don’t have
to reconstruct anything.”
Moving toward her own
career goals, Mrs. Stewart is
earning a doctoral degree in
educational reading and for a
period, was commuting from
Atlanta to the University of
Pennsylvania. She said that
she is now able to handle the
work “at this end”.
She is currently in the
process of deciding a thesis
topic, because her interests
have shifted since living in a
college community, she said
“I came to Atlanta expecting
to do a thesis about illiterate
adults and children learning to
read together,” she said. “But I
Continued on page 6
Mrs. Isabelle Stewart
Singer Extraordinaire: Ms, Robin BrOWTl
If you want to know
Where I’m going
Where I’m going, soon
If anybody asks you
Where I’m going
Where I’m going, soon
Tell them for me that I’m going
up yonder . . .
by Robyn D. Mahone
It could have begun for Ms.
Robift Brown when she was
three years old. Her mother
used to take her to a toy store
where there was a little toy
piano. She wouldn’t go to any
of the other toys in the store.
She’d head straight for that
toy piano.
“My mother stopped taking
me there because she didn’t
want me to tear\it up,” Ms.
Brown said, grinning.
When Mrs. Brown was five
her uncle bought the little
piano for her. She’d sit in her
little comer and play to her
heart’s content. At age seven
she had a real piano. She
began taking lessons when she
was in the first grade. She had
always played the piano at
school functions, but one day,
in junior high school, she was
asked to sing a solo.
“I’ve always sung in church.
I did my first real solo when I
was about five years old.
That’s been my only love, I’ve
always loved music,” Ms.
Brown said.
Ms. Brown, a Spelman
College junior and music ma
jor from Vienna, Georgia, is a
very busy young woman. She
smiled infectiously, revealing
rows of white teeth, as she
talked about the five church
choirs she plays for and
directs.
One of them is the Martin
Luther King Voices of
Freedom. “Alveda King Beal
called me at home during the
Christmas holidays a year ago
and asked me to get a choir
together. I said that I’d see
what I could do.”
She had about a week to get
it all together before the
performance. “I called people.
I pulled people off the streets
and said, ‘you’re going to sing
in my choir’,” she said laugh
ing and making a pulling
motion to show how she’d con
vinced people to join her.
Ms. Brown said that a lot of
her notoriety began, here at
Spelman, after a friend,
Rodney Cash, heard her
singing in the Howard Harreld
lounge on the Spelman cam
pus in 1975. One Sunday, when
she was in church Cash asked
her to sing, impromptu. The
people must have liked what
they heard because afterwards
she began to receive a lot of re
quests to sing at various
churches from persons who
came up to her after the
service.
The first church she began
playing for was Jackson
Memorial. “A friend asked me
to ‘help’ with the choir.” Ms.
Brown said that when she got
there she was greeted with,
“Oh, you’re the new
musician!”
“By March I had four choirs.
In October I started playing at
Ben Hill United Methodist,”
she said, “at the request of
Reverend Cornelius
Henderson.”
One day when Ms. Brown
was sitting among the
congregation at a particular
church, “I said to myself, this
is the one time I could sit down,
relax, and enjoy the program.
The choir walked up to the
mike, then, someone an-
by Robyn Mahone
Every year many books are
stolen from Quarles Library in
Giles Hall on the Spelman
College campus. Every year
there are complaints
catapulted by students and
faculty because requested
books that should be contained
in any library are not there.
The most recent complaint
to be launched by students
concerns what they feel are too
few books by and about
African-American women in
nounced that the musician had
taken ill, ‘but I see Ms. Robin
Brown, I’ll ask her to come on
up and play’.”
Ms. Brown said that she’d
heard the choir sing once, four
or five months ago. As she
walked towards the front of the
church, she thought, “What
Continued on page 7
the Margaret Nabrit Curry
Collection'which is the special
womens collection in Quarles
library. Three students did a
research project for a class
with the objective of pointing
out to the class, school and
community “the number of
books in the women’s collec
tion at Spelman College by
and about black wpmen or
women of color,” as stated in
their 80 page renort
Continued on page 3
Students Charge:
Too Few Books
On Black Women
