Personal Sacrifice

Above: The Marshall and Long families sit for a double family portrait. From left (adults): Nellie L. Marshall, Charles L. Marshall, Anna Patterson Long, Edgar A. Long, Christiansburg Institute Collection.

The Marshall and Long families together formed the core of Christiansburg Industrial Institute's faculty from 1896 to the mid-1920s. The early years were lean and difficult, as Marshall later recalled. Parents withdrew their children, "almost crazed" when they heard that CII was abandoning academics in favor of manual training. According to Marshall, "the members of the faculty at once became objects of scorn to almost the entire colored population." Marshall insisted, however, that the parents simply misunderstood Booker T. Washington's program. Together with four of his fellow Tuskegee graduates -- his wife Nellie L. Marshall, Willie Mae Griffin, Anna Lee Patterson, and Edgar A. Long--he forged ahead and attracted students back to the school. Much work remained, however, and the early year were lean. As the teachers developed the farm almost from scratch, they often dined only on corn-meal and "pig-radishes."

Read Marshall's 1905 account of developing the farm campus.

Edgar A. Long also remembered well the the hardships born to make the farm a campus. In a 1916 speech to a local white church, he recounted the sacrifices the teachers made to develop the farm campus. Like Marshall, he also recalled a sparse early meal.

Read Long's 1916 account of developing the farm campus.

Some sacrifices were greater than others. Charles and Willie Marshall lost an infant daugher while Charles was away on business for CII. Edgar Long later recalled the most painful sacrifice the Marshalls made on behalf of the school.

Read Long's 1916 account of the Marshall family's sacrifice.

Charles Marshall died in 1906 of appendicitis. On hearing the news, the FFA Board convened a special meeting and drafted a resolution in his honor. It acnowledged Marshall's leadership of the school under "meager" conditions and the "unflagging zeal and work" he put into CII's growth.

Above: Excerpt from Friends' Freedmen's Association minutes, 10 July 1906, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. Click the image to read the account.

Above: Commemorative stone marking the grave of Charles Marshall. Photograph courtesy Anna Fariello.

When Edgar A. Long died in 1924, he too was buried in the Christiansburg Industrial Institute's cemetery, which lay just west of the fields he had worked so hard to establish.

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