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| Coral Lott Wilson ca. 1939 |
Coral Lott was born in Goliad, June 16, 1877, the daughter of Jack and Laura McCampbell Lott. Her father was a farmer.
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| U. S. Census 1880 Goliad County, Texas, 1880 |
Her brother, Rev. W. B. Lott, was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, serving churches in Del Rio, The Yorktown circuit, the Lavernia circuit, the Seguin circuit, Georgetown, the Waco district, and churches in San Antonio, Odessa, and Midland. According to her obituary, Coral was educated at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. In 1900 she was living in the Oakland Normal School Community in Colorado County, Texas. She is listed as a teacher.
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| U. S. Census 1900 Colorado County, Texas |
The Oakland Normal School was founded in 1882 to address the needs of Black educators. It was led first by G. R. Townsend and then by Robert Lloyd Smith, listed in the Census Record just above Coral's name. Kletzing and Crogman in Progress of a Race, written in 1898, had this to say about the Oakland Normal School:
Mr. R. L. Smith, of Oakland, Texas, a young man with only one arm, a school teacher, practical farmer, and a member of the state legislature, said: “About five years ago I began to look into the condition of my people. I found them making good crops, from one and a half to two bales of cotton per acre, but their home were small and the influence surrounding them bad. In 1892 I started a society called the ‘Village Improvement Society.’ We have fifty-six members in a village of two hundred people. In five years fifteen families have spent $10,000 in improvements. The surrounding country has been helped by our work. Our smallest house now has four rooms in it and some have eight room. Last year we extended the order and called it “The Farmers’ Improvement Society,” with about seven hundred members. We have five purposes: to get out of debt, and keep out, to adopt improved methods of farming, to co-operate in buying and selling, to get homes and to improve them. One result of our efforts has been a marked changed in the treatment we have received from the white people. Texas is more liberal than most of the Southern states I was more or less guided in my work by what I had heard or read of the Tuskegee conference.” Mr. Smith showed many pictures of homes and families in Oakland. He said he had carried on this work in connection with his school and farm, and that the legislature of Texas was so much interested in his coming to Tuskegee that it gave him a leave of absence and promised to defer action on a bill in which he was interested until his return home.
Jesse S. Wilson was born in La Vernia in 1869, the son of Jack and Susan Wilson. His father was a carpenter and worked at times for Jesse Lane Tiner. Jack and Jesse are both mentioned in Jesse Lane Tiner’s diaries for 1887 and 1899. I have not been able to find where Jesse Wilson was educated. I have found records that he was teaching in the Stephenson Colony School in 1896. In 1899 he was the principal and builder of a new two-story Black school in Sutherland Springs, described as the “handsomest building in Sutherland Springs. The school is described in newspaper articles and in Jesse Tiner’s diary. The diary also describes the burning of the school by arson in 1900. Jesse S. Wilson was accused of burning the school. However, district court records reveal that the case was dropped 8 months later.
For more information about the school see "The Enterprising Folks of Wilson County" and "A Sad Day in Sutherland Springs."
Coral and Jesse married around 1901. They had a daughter, Lillian Lottie Wilson, in 1902, while they were living in Del Rio. By 1906 they are living in San Antonio. Both are employed as schoolteachers. They lived first on Indiana Street and then on Paso Hondo. I don’t know what school Jesse taught at. I did run across a record of him taking part in a Colored Teachers Institute in San Antonio in 1902. The Institute included visitations to public schools in the city and a debate at the court house. J. S. Wilson led the debate for the affirmative side. Jesse died on August 13, 1935 from a stroke.
Coral started the Kenwood School in San Antonio, which later became the Sojourner Truth School. The school is well-documented in San Antonio newspapers. In 1939, on her 25th anniversary, she was honored with a portrait of herself and a portrait of Sojourner Truth. The portraits hung in the Hall of Fame at the Los Angeles Heights High School. I have been trying to find the portraits, but with no luck so far. Artemesia Bowden, the founder and principal of St. Phillip’s College gave the commencement address that year. When the school joined the San Antonio Independent School District in 1949, 110 students were enrolled, with 6 teachers. The school first met in a church, then in a four-room wooden structure, and finally near the end of her career the Sojourner Truth School moved into a modern eight-room brick building with a cafetorium.
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| San Antonio Light, March 12, 1951 |
The structure still exists, now housing Alta Architects. They have gently preserved the building, retaining much of the original ambiance of the school and showcasing the wonderful doors and windows. Walking down the hallway, you could imagine meeting Mrs. Coral on her rounds.
Coral Lott Wilson Jackson died on July 22, 1951. The new school had just been dedicated that spring.
Jesse and Coral and their daughter, Lillian, are all buried in the Eastview Cemetery in San Antonio.
I hope more bits and pieces of the remarkable stories of the lives of Coral Lott Wilson Jackson and Jesse S. Wilson will come to light. In the meantime, we celebrate their amazing accomplishments.
