Henry Grant Mayberry

Quick Facts

Place of Birth:

Birmingham, AL

Date of Birth:

13 October 1872

Place of Death:

Muskogee, OK

Date of Death:

August 1962

Place of Burial:

Muskogee, OK

Cemetery Name:

Booker T. Washington Cemetery

“When I wrote you before I spoke of being a Doctor; But after reading your letter I changed, and, have decided to work among my people. … Mr. Washington's great aim is to turn out young men and women that will be willing to do any thing their hands find to do.”
– Henry Grant Mayberry to Alice Longfellow, 8 October 1895

Fourteen months after Mayberry wrote this reflection, a Tuskegee Institute administrator reported to Longfellow that “Henry Mayberry… graduated last year and is now doing good in the open world…”

For several years after his graduation, Mayberry ran the Boarding Department at Tuskegee Institute. He married Emma Nesbitt, a Tuskegee student and teacher, in 1900 and by 1910 they had moved to Topeka, Kansas, where she taught at the Topeka Industrial Institute, nicknamed the “Western Tuskegee.” The couple appear to have separated in about 1911: in that year Emma moved to Louisiana and Henry moved to Oklahoma. Emma Mayberry continued working at educational institutions, spending 26 years as a teacher and administrator at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Henry Grant Mayberry lived the rest of his life in Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he married Blanche and worked as a porter, or custodian, for the Muskogee Daily Phoenix.