I told him of going into a new district and how I wanted to build an institution of my own and wanted to go into some congested district where little was being done for my people and he suggested that I start a parochial school in connection with his church.
I got to Palatka and started out this community school and worked in the jails two and three times a week, and our to the sawmills there and in general among the young people in clubs there, and built up there a very interesting setting. I stayed there for five years.
Then I made up my mind to go down on the East coast and study the situation there and see what was being done—and found very little being done in that section. The new minister, Reverend S.P. Pratt, who told me he thought I would be interested to see what was happening in that section.
I had no money I was doing a little insurance work in connection with my other work—I sold insurance for the Afro-American and saved up a little money and went to the coast to study what was being done there.
As I studied the situation I saw the importance of someone going down there doing something—So I selected Daytona Beach, a town where very conservative people lived and where James N. Gamble (Of the Proctor & Gamble Company of Cincinnati); Thomas White, (of the White Sewing Machine Company of Cleveland); and other fine people. A fine club of white women in that section formed a philanthropic group of…Palmetto Club..through whom I thought approaches could be made. The colored people had little to offer. A splendid man of the Baptist church, Rev. A.L. James; another fine man of the little Methodist Episcopal church…had conferences with these people and a little woman named Mrs. Warn, had some daughters who felt the importance of some one doing something in that section and gave their cooperation with my idea of starting a school. I made up my mind that I would do it and started out.
