From Iuka to Geneva: Katherine B. Brown and the Mississippi Normal College

Born, raised, and educated in Iuka, Mississippi, at the end of the 19th century, Katherine B. Brown (1879-1939) choose a teaching career over domesticity, a decision that would lead her far from Tishomingo County on her mission to improve education in the state. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree at the Iuka Normal Institute, she launched a teaching career in the rural schools of a neighboring county before moving to Moss Point as its high school principal.

When the Mississippi Normal College opened in 1912, Miss Brown, as she was known, was among the original faculty.  While teaching history and Latin, she became interested in international affairs, organizing the World Alliance Club (1922), which later became the International Relations Club. In the same year, she traveled to Baltimore and New York as the Mississippi state representative to the Pan-American Conference for Women. After receiving a master’s degree in history from Columbia in 1924, she was named chair of the history department at the newly renamed college, the State Teachers College.

In 1926 she was elected president of the Mississippi Education Association (MEA). Record crowds attended its annual meeting. Her address advocated for a progressive agenda of more equitable tax support, compulsory school attendance, child labor laws, and increased training and salary for teachers. She also commented that “because life was never before so complex, the burden of bringing the child into proper relation with life was never so heavy. The home is not carrying as much of this burden as it once carried. The school must come into the breach.”

Making 1926 a banner year was her selection as a delegate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which was a group of fifty professors of law and international relations who were sent to travel and study in Europe at the League of Nations and World Court. She embarked on July 28 for the proceedings beginning in Paris on August 5. A special dinner in honor of the American delegation was held in Geneva on September 8. Speakers included: future Nobel Peace prize recipient, Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount of Chelwood,  an architect of the League of Nations; Manley Ottner Hudson, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace prize; and William E. Rappard, future co-founder of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, the birthplace of Misesian economics. 

On the eve of the Great Depression, Miss Brown lost her position as head of the history department in a political purge of faculty and administration that began with Theodore Bilbo’s governorship. After spending some time at the University of California, Berkeley, she returned to the State Teachers College where she returned to teaching as a professor of history until her death in 1939. 

The full address to the MEA, a journal of her voyage to Europe, and the speeches delivered at the American delegation dinner may be found in M114 Kate B. Brown Papers. For more information, contact or 601.266.4117.

Text by Lorraine A. Stuart, Head of Special Collections and Curator of Historical Manuscripts and Archives.