Uncrowned Community Builders

Harriet Price was born in Lexington, Kentucky and was raised in Kinsley, Kansas, where her father was a prosperous businessman. In addition to being a rancher and stockman, he also owned a livery stable. Her early education included attendance at a private day school. Harriet was a graduate of the Kansas State Teacher's College in Emporia, Kansas. She also attended summer institutes for teachers at the College.

Harriet moved to Oklahoma shortly after the opening of the Cherokee Strip in 1883. She worked as a teacher for seven years in rural schools before being employed in the Oklahoma City public school system. After forty years, she retired from the system and was honored with an award for "Faithful and meritorious service in the schools of Oklahoma."

In 1907, Harriet Price Jacobson organized the East Side Culture Club of Oklahoma City and was its first president. Under her leadership, the club issued the call to local clubs in the state to meet to organize a statewide organization. The Oklahoma Federation of Colored Women's Clubs was founded in 1910 and Mrs. Jacobson was elected its first president. She served in that capacity from 1910 to 1915.

During her tenure as president, she focused the work of the Federation on the establishment of training schools for delinquent African American boys and girls. She was also credited with working on human service projects that benefited Oklahoma residents of all races.

In a 1938 address on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Oklahoma Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, Mrs. Jacobson provided a colorful description of the early years of the organization:

"In those days all of us were busy women. We had home cares and other responsibilities, very little time that we could give to the work and less money; no way of getting about over the state, no funds with which to send out literature; but we felt that we were laying the foundation of an organization which would in a few years be the most helpful that could have been planned for making better conditions among our people of the state."

Harriet was an author who wrote a book of poetry entitled, "Songs in the Night".

(Information for this biography was obtained from: Wesley, Charles Harris, The History of the NACWC: A Legacy of Service: Washington, D.C, the NACWC, 1984, pp. 508-10)

Harriet Jacob's Poem

To the Editor of The Black Dispatch
By An Old Time Family Friend


Long years ago, to Sooner Land, there came a little lad,
With brother one and sisters three, his mother and his dad
They came from far-off northern state,
From city large near sky blue lake
They settled in the black-jack regions
And there they lived for many seasons.

The father, reverend man of God, went on his journeys day by day,
His duty was to travel around and seek lost souls and price and pray;
To gather good folks in a band and organize a church so grand
For hand not that great "Mission Board" sent him to this land rough and wild

To comfort wayworn, weary hearts and seek the lost and wandering child?
The mother, gentle, sweet and brace, stayed on the farm and made a home,
That in the future years to come her children might not stray or roam.

Thus in this atmosphere so fine, this little lad grew day by day.
He fed the horses, milked the cows; he walked to schoolhouse far away,
And, as the months and years went by he tilled the soil and made things grow
And planted gardens green and fine and fruit trees standing row by row,
So when drought came to burn and scar
The people had no cause to fear,
For had he not within his hand
Things to sustain, at their command?

Then studying far into the night of great men who long passed had lived,
He soon resolved within his heart that he too something great must give
Unto the land which gave him birth,
This land, for him, of joyless mirth
Unto his race, downtrodden, weak,
To help and comfort he must seek
To find the path of justice, right,
And then push forward day and night.

Now morning dawns, light's on its way,
Shadows have fled into the day;
The doubts and fears of former years
Have disappeared. No more they'll sear the heart with grief and pain
But in their stead comes joyful gain.


For opportunity, at last, has linked the future with the past.
And power has come, and honor too.
Ever to them trust be faithful, true.

Harriet Price Jacobson
October 39, 1937