From the Darkroom: Longtime Springfieldian Bea Curtis experienced a century of change

Springfield-Greene County Library District
·1 min read
Voda Beatrice (Hardy) Curtis, affectionately known as “Bea,” shown here in 1987, lived in Springfield since the first decade of the 1900s.
Voda Beatrice (Hardy) Curtis, affectionately known as “Bea,” shown here in 1987, lived in Springfield since the first decade of the 1900s.

Voda Beatrice (Hardy) Curtis, affectionately known as “Bea,” shown here in 1987, lived in Springfield since the first decade of the 1900s, and her family had ties to Springfield that traced back to the Civil War.

Curtis attended the Lincoln School. Her favorite memory was the “rhetoricals” every Friday afternoon.

“Mostly you could recite poetry and parts of plays and classics,” Curtis recalled. “This was my introduction to the literary world and I wanted to learn more and more.”

After graduating from Lincoln High School in 1910, Curtis completed a two-year teaching program at Walden University in Nashville, Tennessee, then transferred to Howard University in Washington, D.C. While a student at the university, Curtis participated in the famous Women’s Suffrage march down Pennsylvania Avenue the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

Curtis later returned to Springfield, where she worked as a bookkeeper at Hardricks, the largest African American-owned store in Springfield. She taught school at Cave Spring and Mount Vernon before teaching in Springfield.

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Bea Curtis, a Springfieldian since the 1900s, here in 1987.