» Retirement – It’s What You Make It

This post is written by Nate Hubler, the Avery Research Center’s Liberatory Legacies Archival Fellow, who started in this position in February 2024. She will contribute blog posts about the collections she is processing through the grant.

Specifics about what one’s retirement might look like vary drastically from person to person, but it is a generally held sentiment that everyone would like to retire at some point. Far less common is considering the potential of retiring twice and what retirement might mean in that context. Elmore Browne retired twice during his life, and each retirement provided him with a moment to recalibrate his life around the skills he gained and refocus his life on the work he wanted to be doing. 

Growing Up on Sullivan’s Island 

Elmore MacArthur Browne was born on August 27, 1914, on Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. His journey through education followed the contours of school segregation in the Charleston area at the time. He began his education on Sullivan’s Island but had to travel to Mount Pleasant after the third grade and then, once he started high school, to Charleston proper to attend the Avery Normal Institute. While there is not much from his high school years among his papers, we know he graduated in 1934¹, participated in multiple plays his senior year of high school², and that his time at Avery made a lasting impact on his life.  

After graduating from Avery, he attended Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in the fall of the following year. He attributed the decision to the culture of Avery and Hampton’s student aid program: “I went to an American Missionary Association school and all of us were indoctrinated with the idea that education was our salvation. I couldn’t afford most colleges, even with a scholarship, but I was lucky enough to be accepted at Hampton Institute… [which] had a work year program. The first year you worked full-time for the college and went to school part-time so you were able to build up a nest egg.”³ He studied rural sociology and economics at Hampton, but his studies were interrupted in 1941 after he was drafted into the United States Army. 

Serving in the Army  

He served as a Chemical Smoke Generator Unit Commander on the Western Front during World War II. He was awarded a Purple Heart for a wound sustained just a few weeks after he wrote to his aunt, Emma Frasier, about how well things were going in France. He was involved with the Normandy Invasion and would revisit the beaches of Normandy with Herbert Fielding, a fellow Averyite, in 2005. 

After his active duty ended in 1945, he entered the Army Reserves and returned to Hampton to finish his degree. This would begin a twenty-year career in the United States Army. He was called from reserve status to serve again in the Korean War and would later serve in the Vietnam War. When not on active duty, he wrote, reviewed, and taught training courses at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. He retired from the Army in 1966 as a Captain and worked briefly as the Director of Training at Rixon Electronics before he started a new career in collegiate education. 

 

A Collegiate Career 

In 1968, Cheyney State College (now Cheyney University) hired Elmore as the Dean of Men. At the time, this position focused on helping students navigate the newfound bureaucracy of higher education and connecting them with services like counseling, academic advising, career development, and financial aid. After two years, he was promoted to Assistant Dean of Students. His time in this role was brief because he left to pursue a graduate degree in Student Personnel Administration and a position as a House Director at Case Western Reserve University.  

After earning his M.A., Elmore moved back to Pennsylvania in 1973, though farther north this time, to work as the Director of the Black Cultural Center at Pennsylvania State University. The Center was established in 1971 and grew out of Black student organizing efforts in the late 1960s and early 1970s, calling for more support and representation for Black students and other students of color at the University.  One of his early challenges as Director was working to change the name of the Center to the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, a name which had been decided on through a student survey in 1972. 

Under Browne’s leadership, the Center became an essential campus resource that organized robust student cultural programs, including exhibits, speakers, performances, and conferences, maintained collections in their Reading and Resource Rooms about Black life, and ran orientation programs for incoming students. Publishing was also a focus of the Center under Elmore. In 1977, he organized a monthly periodical called Bits and Pieces and a semiannual journal called Minority Voices. Bits and Pieces were distributed on campus and featured excerpts of speeches or essays and brief sections discussing campus, state, and national news and profiles of prominent Black people.  Minority Voices published “original scholarly articles dealing with the arts (painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, music, dance, theatre, cinema, television and photography) as they relate to Afro-Americans, Chicanos, Native Americans, and Puerto Ricans.”⁴ 

He retired from the position in 1982 and returned to Charleston. However, he maintained life-long contacts with his friends and colleagues at the University and returned periodically for events on the campus. 

Returning to South Carolina 

Despite this being Elmore’s second retirement, his return to Charleston was not necessarily intended to be the start of a period of rest and relaxation. If anything, he was as busy as ever as he became an active member in multiple civic and community groups and built a new home on the Sullivan’s Island land he grew up on. He would live in his aunt’s previous home at 212 Congress Street until his new home was finished in the early 1990s. 

He joined the Charleston Neighborhood Housing Services of South Carolina Board of Directors as a Charleston resident from 1984 through 1988 and served as Chairperson of the Board beginning in 1985. The organization provided client services for homeowners, landlords, and renters and aided with home improvement, purchase, and rehab loans.

He also became a member of the Avery Institute for Afro-American History and Culture and served as President and Vice President of the Board of Directors during his involvement. His papers show a keen interest in all the Avery Institute and the Avery Research Center developments, from the efforts to acquire and restore the Avery Normal Institute school building to caring for the museum holdings, searching for new staff, and fundraising for the Institute. He also attended as many events and exhibitions at the Research Center as possible. 

In the early 2000s, he joined the C.O. Federal Credit Union Board of Directors and served as Chairman at a time when they were working to increase the bank’s membership and continue to find ways to serve the Community.  

He also founded the Original Islanders to preserve the African American Cemetery on Sullivan’s Island, which Black families, including Browne’s family, have used for generations. The group underwent multiple fundraising rounds to secure funds for envisioned preservation projects. Suggested plans included a parking area, walkways, new plantings and clearing of areas, a Circle of Remembrance with the names of the dead inscribed on bricks, and the construction of a gazebo with photographs and stories of the Black residents of the Island. 

While not all the plans were fully realized, a wooden fence and gazebo were built, and a historical marker commemorating the Cemetery was erected. In this segment from the ETV Road Show, he describes his connection to the Cemetery and the preservation work done by the committee. Elmore Browne passed away on October 5, 2006, and now rests in the cemetery he worked to preserve. 

The Elmore M. Browne papers are open to the public for research. They document his personal history, correspondence, professional and personal affiliations, homegoing celebrations and funeral services for friends, family members, and colleagues, miscellaneous periodicals, event programs, newspaper clippings, and artifacts he collected. We encourage everyone to review the finding aid and schedule an appointment to visit! 

Footnotes

1. Avery Normal Institute 1934 commencement program, Edmund Lee Drago collection, Box 6, Folder 6, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.  ↩︎
2. “Program for The Avery Dramatic Club Presents “Similn’ Through” A romantic Comedy in a Prologue and Three Acts by Allan Langdon Martin, Avery Normal School Memorabilia, Box 2, Folder 24, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. ↩︎
3. “HI Alumnus Directs Penn State Culture Center”, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 19, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. ↩︎
4. Minority Voices, Volume 1, Number 1, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 18, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.  ↩︎

Image citations

Houston, Texas 1992 family reunion group photo, 1992, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 1, Folder 5, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Hampton Institute transcript, 1950, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 3, Folder 21, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

2^nd Lt. Elmore Browne, January 1943, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 3, Folder 13, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Letter to Emma B. Frasier from Elmore Browne, 11/28/1944, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 3, Folder 7, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Arc of Triumph, undated, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 3, Folder 13, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

US Army Ordnance Center and School 252A/201.1-A-1 Lesson Plan, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 3, Folder 3, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA.

Letter of recommendation for Elmore Browne from Samuel J. Spencer, 06/04/1971, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 3, Folder 22, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Case Western Reserve University graduate studies in student personnel administration in higher education flyer, 1971, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 4, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Letter to Thelma T. Price from Elmore Browne about renaming the Culture Center, 01/02/1974, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 11, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Letter to Raymond O. Murphy from Thelma T. Price about renaming the Culture Center, 10/22/1975, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 11, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Bits and Pieces, Volume 2, Number 8, 1978, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 7, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Minority Voices, Volume 1, Number 1, 1977, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 18, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Letter to Lawrence Young from Elmore Browne, 05/02/1997, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 2, Folder 4, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Photo of Elmore Browne, Thelma Price, Julian Bond, and Virginius Thornton outside the Walnut Building, undated, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 4, Folder 22, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Charleston Neighborhood Housing Services Target Area map, undated, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 5, Folder 27, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Daily notebook, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 1, Folder 12, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Photograph of Elmore Browne, Dr. Marvin Dulaney, and two other unidentified men, undated, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 7, Folder 8, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Letter to Original Islanders members from Elmore Browne, 02/16/2004, Elmore M. Browne papers, Box 7, Folder 16, Avery Research Center, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA. 

Sullivan’s Island African American Cemetery historical marker, 08/31/2024, taken by Nate Hubler. 

Sullivan’s Island African American Cemetery gazebo, 08/31/2024, taken by Nate Hubler.