Try and Be Somebody: The Story of Dr. Henry Lake Dickason, Second Edition, by Becky Hatcher Crabtree

This book is entitled Try and Be Somebody” because that was the advice that his father gave Henry Lake Dickason (1887-1957) when he left the farm where he grew up and where his enslaved paternal grandparents had worked and remained after emancipation. Dickason knew all four of his grandparents, all of whom were born enslaved. His family lived in a log cabin on Peters Mountain in Monroe County, West Virginia. He started school in a one-room schoolhouse where his father served as teacher. Since there were not high schools available for people of color where he lived, at 16 he became a residential student at Bluefield Colored Institute (BCI). He graduated in three years and returned to his family’s farm. The following year, BCI began offering a program to train teachers, and Dickason returned. His math teacher, Grace Robinson, urged him to go to college, and he was accepted at Ohio State University. In 1913 he earned a Bachelor’s degree and in the following year a Masters, both in math. T