Tech High School Class of 1970’s 50th reunion project was to raise funds to procure a grave marker for Bessie Anderson Speights who was the first female African-American graduate of Tech High School (June Class of 1916). Bessie (a long time school teacher) has been interred in an unmarked grave since 1982. The class is hosting a dedication service Saturday May, 15th at 11 a.m. (rain or shine). This will be at the Floral Park Cemetery at 425 N. Holt Road on Indy’s westide (far southwest portion of cemetery).
The connection of Tech and Bessie has been documented, thanks to Randy Wilson (class of 1970). Arsenal Technical High School began as a high school in 1912, after a short stint as Winona Technical Institute, which closed its doors in 1910. Prior to that, it had been an Arsenal for the Union Army during the Civil War which ended in 1865.
The Civil War had resulted in the emancipation of several million slaves of African descent. In a number of Southern states before the end of the Civil War, it had been illegal for black slaves to be allowed to read and write, but now they were free to pursue an education and to have a better life for themselves and their children.
In 1916, barely 50 years after the end of the Civil War (the equivalent of our looking back to 1970), within the ranks of the 76 seniors, was a young lady named Bessie A. Anderson, the very first female African-American to become a Tech graduate.
Bessie Anderson was born in Garrard County, Kentucky in November, 1898, the daughter of a sharecropper father and a soon-widowed mother who was a cook to provide for her family of several children; some of Bessie’s older sisters were cooks and domestic servants/maids. It couldn’t have been easy. Times were hard financially in 1916, and the world was at war. Girls didn’t need an education; women couldn’t even vote.
As a woman of color, Bessie could have only looked forward to being employed as a cook, like her mother and sister; a domestic servant, laundress or housekeeper, a hotel maid or cleaning lady, but Bessie wanted better for herself, so she continued her education and went to a teaching school, probably the Teacher’s College of Indianapolis (located at 23rd and College Ave., close to her home) and became a certified teacher and faculty member of Indianapolis Public Schools.
Bessie A. Anderson Speights (in 1935 she married Lafayette Speights) taught in the Indianapolis Public Schools for 30-plus years, many of them as a 6th grade or Special Ed teacher in the “colored schools” as they were termed at the time.
Bessie Anderson Speights was widowed in 1967 and she passed away in 1982 at the age of 87, apparently without any immediate family. 
The Tech class of 1970 was touched by this story and set out to create a scholarship in her name and place a marker on her grave. Thanks to the class of 1970 and other Tech alumni donations which have made this project a reality. Saturday will be the dedication — all are welcome to attend (with masks please).
