San Antonio College Library

Ruth Wright Hayre grew up in a close, genteel family that had prized learning since the days of the Civil War. At age ten, her grandfather, Richard Robert Wright, led by his remarkable mother, marched 200 miles to attend a school for emancipated slaves in a discarded railroad boxcar in Atlanta. When Union General Oliver Otis Howard came to the classroom and asked what message he should take back north, young Richard responded, in the famous exchange...