Iola Winn Rowan Collection

Iola Winn Rowan was one of the first professional home demonstration workers in Texas. She was the Dallas County home demonstration agent from 1927 to 1930; state supervisor of home demonstration agents from 1931 to 1946; and superintendent of the Brady State School for Delinquent Girls from 1946 to 1948. Along the way she found time to be president of the Texas Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (1947-51), and in 1957 was elected vice president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs. Born on October 20, 1896, to H.D. Winn and Ida M. Routt in Chappell Hill, Texas, Iola Winn Rowan graduated from high school at the Mary Allen Seminary. In 1931, she earned a bachelor of science in home economics from Prairie View College, which offered several programs for home demonstration agents, such as gardening, cooking, sanitation, disease prevention, care of livestock and poultry, and mattress making. Upon graduation, Rowan became the state’s second superintendent for Black home demonstration agents, succeeding Mary Evelyn Hunter, and she organized dozens of home demonstration clubs. In 1933, Black home economics delegates from Texas HBCUs decided to hold a convention at Dallas’s Adolphus Hotel. Due to racial segregation, they were ushered through the basement to the freight elevator. Rowan and her peers refused to accept such treatment and left the premises immediately. The delegates instead convened at the home of Mrs. H. D. Winn, Iola Rowan’s mother. . Even though the management of the Adolphus asked them to return to the hotel, the group decided to go home instead. This was but one of the incidents that inspired Rowan play an active role in the NAACP, the Texas Social Welfare Association, and the Dallas United Nations Association.

Under her leadership, more than 15,000 Dallas women had participated in home demonstration sessions by 1937. Rowan also completed the requirements for a master of science degree in rural sociology, but she did not write a thesis. Moreover, she went onto study at Wilberforce University and the Wiley Extension School. Her tenure at the extension service ended in 1946, but she still had much work left to do. On October 1, 1946, Rowan became the first superintendent of the Brady State School for Delinquent Girls, and students were first admitted the following February. Even though the school had been established in 1927 by act of the 40th Texas Legislature, the necessary appropriations were not made until 1945. The 49th Legislature provided for the operation of the school, which opened in a former prisoner-of-war camp about two miles east of Brady, in McCullough County. It opened with a staff consisting of superintendent Rowan, a secretary, three housemothers, a graduate nurse, and an assistant. After getting the school on solid ground, Rowan stepped down as superintendent in June 1948. You can also visit the PVAMU Faculty & Administrators Finding Aid PV Panther Project website https://pvpantherproject.com/project/iola-winn-rowan-papers/"