Jessie P. Guzman

Jessie Parkhurst Guzman (December 1, 1898 - October 25, 1996) was a writer, archivist, historian, educator, and college administrator, primarily at the Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. In her work at the Tuskegee Institute, particularly in the Department of Research and Records, she documented the lives of African Americans and maintained the Institute's lynching records.

Guzman was born to David C. and Ella Roberts Parkhurst in Savannah, Georgia. She lived with her godparents, the Wragg family. Reverend Doctor John Percy Wragg was a clergyman who led the American Bible Society's Agency Among the Colored People of the South. After completing her high school education at Atlanta's Clark University in 1915, Guzman attended Howard University where she graduated with an A.B. degree in 1919. She received her M.A. from Columbia University in 1924 and continued her studies at the University of Chicago and American University. In 1940, she married Ignacio L. Guzman, a member of the Tuskegee Institute's faculty.

After working as John Wragg's private secretary, Guzman taught history at New Orleans College from 1922-1923. She then began her work at the Tuskegee Institute where she worked for a total of over forty years. From 1923-1929 she worked as a research assistant at the Tuskegee Institute and then taught history at the Alabama State Teacher's College during the 1929-1930 academic year. After her brief time in Montgomery, Alabama, Guzman returned to the Tuskegee Institute where she worked until her retirement in 1965. Working first under Monroe Work and later as director of the Department of Research and Records, Guzman contributed to various research projects and publications.

Guzman also served as the dean of women at the Tuskegee Institute from 1938-1944.

She was named Tuskegee Woman of the Year in 1950 and was the first African American to run for office in Macon County Alabama in 1954.

Negro Year Book (editor, 1947, 1952)

"The Role of the Black Mammy in the Plantation Household" (Journal of Negro History, 1938)

"Some Recent Literature By and About Negroes" (Service Magazine, 1947)

"Lynching⎯Crime" (Negro Year Book: A Review of Events Affecting Negro Life, 1944-1946, 1947)

"Contributions to Negro Life: Establishing and Directing the Department of Records and Research at Tuskegee Institute" (Journal of Negro History, 1949)

Some Achievements of the Negro Through Education. (Tuskegee, Ala.; Department of Records and Research, Tuskegee Institute, 1951)

George Washington Carver; a Classified Bibliography. (Tuskegee, Ala.; Department of Records and Research, Tuskegee Institute, 1954)

"The Social Contributions of the Negro Woman Since 1940"

Crusade for Civic Democracy: The Story of the Tuskegee Civic Association, 1941-1970 (1983)