SCSU's first Black graduate Ruby Cora Webster is not forgotten – St. Cloud Live

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ST. CLOUD — How do most buildings on a college campus get their names? Typically, from generous donors.
The story behind St. Cloud State University’s Ruby Cora Webster Hall is slightly different. It includes a grassroots movement, a 2,251-signature petition and one extraordinary alumna.
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In 2017, Christopher Lehman started the petition to rename 51 Building, the former home of the business school, in honor of the university’s first documented African American graduate, Ruby Cora Webster.
Lehman, a professor of Ethnic, Gender and Women’s Studies at SCSU, hoped Webster could become a role model for students. He knew he wanted to do something following the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, in August 2017 and the growing Black Lives Matter movement.
“I thought it would be inspiring because here was this student who looked different from everybody else, but did not let any differences that came from her skin color prohibit her from accomplishing her graduation from the university,” Lehman told St. Cloud LIVE.
During his first weekend campaigning for the name change in fall 2017, Lehman got 1,000 signatures for his petition from students and faculty.
“And for anyone else who has a way of standing out … Ruby Webster can be an inspiring figure for them to accomplish and achieve whatever they want, even while standing out,” he added.
On Oct. 15, 2018, SCSU officially renamed the former business building after Webster. Her surviving family attended the ceremony, Lehman said.
Webster was born on Dec. 27, 1889, in Delphos, Ohio, the fourth of five children born to former slaves John (1846-1918) and Lizzie (1855-1923) Webster. She was part of the first free generation of African Americans in the U.S., according to Lehman.
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She moved to St. Cloud with her parents and three older siblings — Adelaide, Charles, and Harry —sometime between 1888 and 1893, according to records from the SCSU archives. Her younger sister, Emma, was born in St. Cloud in 1894.
John Webster was a proprietor of a barber shop, and the Webster children attended school in St. Cloud, according to records from the SCSU archives.
“Because the African American population in St. Cloud was so small, no mechanisms or facilities for segregation were ever put in place, so she grew up going to school with European American children,” Lehman said.
Stearns History Museum records show she graduated from St. Cloud High School on June 1, 1908.
Webster joined SCSU — then called St. Cloud State Normal School — in the fall of 1908. The purpose of the school was to train teachers who would go on to work in in Minnesota public schools, according to SCSU’s archivist Tom Steman.
After completing a one-year program, Webster graduated in the spring of 1909 with an elementary education degree, making her the first documented African American to attend and graduate from the university.
“I thought that to be remarkable because the year 1909 is in the midst of this terrible vigilante violence against African Americans all over the country,” Lehman said. “For Ruby Webster to graduate from an institute of higher learning, for her to do that here in St. Cloud, is remarkable.”
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Though the Emancipation Proclamation made slavery illegal in 1863, segregation took root in the late 1800s and survived for decades. This period involved violence against Black Americans as well as legalized racial discrimination and separation of races through Jim Crow laws, affecting all aspects of daily life, according to the Library of Congress.
“It’s no coincidence that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is established in 1909 in the midst of all these lynchings,” Lehman said.
The ongoing culture of prejudice made it challenging for Webster to find a job following graduation, according to Lehman. The 1910 city directory indicates that Webster lived in St. Cloud, and identified her as a teacher. However, if she was a teacher, she did not work at any local or state institution, according to Lehman.
By then, Ruby Webster likely left Minnesota. The 1910 Census lists Webster as a boarder in Kansas City, Missouri, around April 26, 1910. She is also listed in the 1910 and 1911 Kansas City directories as a teacher at the Phillips School, according to the SCSU archives.
Despite this, SCSU records show Webster was listed as a student in the fifth year program at the St. Cloud Normal School during the 1911-12 academic year.
While it is unclear when exactly Webster moved, it is known that she married Hardy Watts on June 12, 1912, and lived in Kansas City, Missouri. During their marriage, Watts worked as a clerk, a porter for a bank, and a foreman for the J.C. Stevens Mercantile, according to SCSU archives. From 1922 to 1923, Webster taught at the Yates School in Kansas City, according to SCSU archives.
The couple had two children, Donna and Hardy Jr., both born in 1914. However, Hardy Jr. would die on Feb. 21, 1915. Hardy Watts Sr. was struck and killed by a car on July 29, 1927.
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By 1938, Webster had married and divorced a second husband, Robert Maddox, and moved in with her daughter, Donna, and her husband and four children, according to SCSU archives. Ruby and Donna then ran a grocery store out of their home. Later, Webster would get her driver’s license and make a living as a successful Avon Lady, selling cosmetics. During this time, records show she remarried a man named Reynolds.
She spent the rest of her life living with her family in Canada, spending her free time working in her garden or art projects, according to SCSU archives. Webster was especially passionate about painting and pottery.
Webster died on Dec. 20, 1974, a week before her 85th birthday.
Later, in 2016, she was one of the first two SCSU alumni to be put in SCSU’s School of Education’s Hall of Fame.
While Lehman was the one who first suggested Webster with the building renaming, he could not have made it happen on his own, he said.
“It couldn’t have happened without student support,” said Lehman, whose office is in Ruby Cora Webster Hall. “I have heard from my colleagues that it has boosted morale. It’s a powerful feeling knowing that a grassroots movement made it happen and that the community’s voices were heard.”