“A Nickel and A Prayer” by Jane Edna Hunter. Edited by Rhondda Robinson Thomas. Part of the series “Regenerations: African American Literature and Culture.” West Virginia University Press.

If you are interested in the history of our nation and the resourcefulness and positive actions of African Americans, I recommend the new and annotated version of “A Nickel and a Prayer” the autobiography of social activist Jane Edna Hunter (1882-1971). First published in 1940, the book’s current edition was edited by Rhondda Robinson Thomas, an assistant English professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. The reissue by WVU Press provides an opportunity for Hunter’s remarkable vision and accomplishments to be appreciated by a larger audience.

Born on a plantation, the daughter of a former South Carolina slave, Hunter’s childhood was spent doing sharecropper field work. Despite poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to employment or an education, she became a “trained nurse” in 1905 and followed the job market to Cleveland.

During the Great Northern Migration, as the time is called, African Americans were recruited for jobs in northern industrial areas. In many cities, housing for African Americans was often in slum-like neighborhoods and highly undesirable. Naïve rural women were at the mercy of landlord and pimps.

As Hunter searched for a place to live, she saw job-hunting young women recruited as prostitutes. Sickened by her surroundings, she enlisted friends and church members to join together in prayer and discuss the work and housing issues.  She suggested they begin donating, a nickel at a time, to establish a safe haven and educational supervision for the newcomers.

Jane Edna Hunter

What began as a rescue effort for a few women evolved into a very large house accommodating 22 women. The structure grew to a nine-story YWCA-like structure with 135 rooms overseen by Hunter and an interracial coalition. The effort grew to include job training and recreation, guided by the nickels and the prayers, along with Hunter’s firm management, vision and skills at raising money.

By 1925, this daughter of a share-cropping former slave held a degree from Baldwin-Wallace Law School and was a member of the Ohio Bar. Her activist work led to collaboration with noted educators Booker T. Washington and Mary McCloud Bethune, as well as key figures from many walks of life. She received honors and honorary degrees, including a master of science from Tuskegee (1938).  Perhaps more importantly, she saw her model for housing, training, and recreation replicated in nine other locations.

During a crisis in her organization — and there were many — Hunter wrote her friend Bethune asking for a copy of a poem she had seen framed in Bethune’s home, “Keep-A-Goin’!” This poem by Frank L. Stanton has the same name and may be the poem the two women so admired. Here are some lines from the last stanza. They seem pertinent:

When it looks like all is up,

Keep-a-goin’!

It concludes:

See the wild birds on the wing,

Hear the bells that sweetly ring,

When you feel like sighin’, sing,

Keep-a-goin’!

Hunter obviously took the words to heart. Her life was one of struggle. She was not born into material wealth, she was not a member of the upper class, and no one financed her way through a prestigious university. She educated herself and initiated her humanitarian project with no outside financing and no important connections. In an era of civil unrest and rampant racial discrimination, she took the high road and kept a goin’.