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PEARL C. ANDERSON
I want to help-I want to do forpeople"
BY SAM CHILDERS
P earl C. Anderson's mantra came from a
lesson her husband taught her soon after
they met. "Remember, everyone you meet
is fighting a hard battle," he would tell her, "so be
kind, be kind to everyone you meet." It was a
lesson that she never forgot, and her kindness
elevated her to almost legendary status-first
among her fellow African-American neighbors
and eventually to the entire city of Dallas and
beyond.
Born to a white physician father and
an African-American midwife mother, Pearl
Bowden spent her early years in Winn Parish,
Louisiana, where she learned reading by drawing
letters and words in the dirt of her front yard.
Later, she would walk three miles to her segregated
schoolhouse wearing her uncle's shoes. "I
was about seven or eight years old and wearing
my uncle's shoes and it didn't look too good," she
would recall many years later. "I'd take them off
and go ahead and have school."
Young Pearl worked in the fields of
Louisiana, stripping sugar cane and picking peas
and peanuts. She considered following her
mother into the midwife profession, but instead
she enrolled at Gibsland College for one year.
She briefly taught school in Louisiana and later
in Arkansas, but heard stories from relatives
about how life was better in Dallas. In 1919, at 2I
years of age, she packed up everything she owned
and moved to Dallas-alone.
With a small sum of money she had saved,
she purchased a lot in South Dallas, where she
planned on opening a grocery store. "After I
bought the lot, I didn't have money to build the
store," she remembered many years later. She
approached the owner of a lumberyard and
explained her situation. "I went down there and
asked them if they'd let me have the lumber and
would they build it," she said. "I told them, 'If I
can't pay you back, you can take the lot."' The
store, located on Dildock Street, was an imme
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