Biography:

Educator. Born– June, 1870, near Roanoke. Parents–Jerry and Addie Greer Holtzclaw, former slaves. Married– Mary Ella Patterson. Children–five.  Education–Tuskegee Institute, 1890-1898, while employed as farm worker, office boy, and buggy driver for Booker T. Washington. Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College, MA, 1908; further study in summer sessions at Harvard College. Publisher of a newspaper for Afro-Americans in Alabama; taught at the school at Snow Hill, Ala., 1898-1902. Founded a school on the Tuskegee model in Utica, Mississippi, in 1902; it became Utica Normal and Industrial Institute, the first institute of higher education for African-Americans in northern Mississippi.  Holtzclaw was director and president of Utica Institute for forty years, until his death.  The Library at the school, now the Utica campus of Hinds Community College, was named in his honor when it was dedicated in 2003. Died 1943.

Source:

Growing up Black, edited by David Jay; Lives of Mississippi Authors, 1817-1967; article in Roanoke Leader, March 7, 1973.

Publication(s):

Black Man’s Burden. New York; Neale Pub. Co., 1915.

A Negro’s Life Story. Utica, Miss.; Utica Institute Electric Printing, 1908.