read nor write but knew the importance of education and made sure her children understood its power.

At that time, the Cabal community provided a schoolhouse for its youth up to the seventh grade.

Few students advanced to the black high school because it was 19 miles away in Chester, and there was no transportation provided. Those families who wanted their children to receive more education had to ask friends in the region to house the teenagers during their schooling. Powell spent time boarding with friends until school buses became available by the middle of the 20th

century.

A graduate of Finley High School in Chester, Powell missed his graduation ceremony because he was drafted. It was his first exposure of being around young white men his own age as President Harry Truman decided it was more economical to integrate the military, beginning in 1948. American soldiers of all races bunked together, ate together in the mess halls and fought the enemy as one unit during what was referred to as the Korean Conflict.

DESIRE TO RETURN TO SCHOOL

Powell served in the U.S. Army for two years. He boarded the bus for Fort Jackson at 9 a.m. on March 11, 1953.

Fortunately, Powell didn’t leave the country during his military service. After working some odd jobs upon his return home in 1955, he realized he needed a trade. He attended a school in Denmark, South Carolina, and then Friendship Junior College’s trade program in Rock Hill on the GI Bill. “There was one overriding factor that came to mind every time I thought of what to do with myself, that was: ‘Billy, you need to go back to school,’” Powell wrote in his memoirs.

Diagnosed with tuberculosis, which in those days often proved fatal, he spent 14 months in treatment at the Veterans Administration hospital in Oteen, North Carolina. When he returned, he courted and married his wife in 1958 and set about learning the upholstery business. Powell set up his own upholstery shop by 1962, and until he changed jobs in 1977, he had furniture stacked up in his shop on a waiting list.

Powell met Mae Oria Lindsay in 1953 at a going away party that neighbors threw for him before he left to join the Army. Five years later they got married and raised four children.

“By 1966, I was 35 years old and had not finished school at the level I felt I wanted to be,” Powell wrote. “The (government and church) boards and committees that I served on at that time were a constant reminder that I needed to increase my education.”

Click on the photo above to view the Billy Powell photo gallery.

14 He earned a two-year degree at Friendship Junior College

but knew that obtaining a four-year degree was essential to supporting his wife, their four children and his mother.

PROUD OF HIS WINTHROP DEGREE

Powell was one of several men to enroll when Winthrop opened its doors to men in the early 1970s. “Winthrop was one of the best things to happen to me,” said Powell, who earned a degree in political science and sociology as a non-traditional student.

His degree did not come easy, he said, but it is “one that made me proud that I stayed in the struggle.”

Powell still wears his Winthrop ring as one of the first African-American men to graduate from Winthrop. “We weren’t trying to make history,” Powell said. “But we did.”

Powell’s wife, Mae ’74, and daughter, Andrena ’81, also graduated from Winthrop.

After graduating from Winthrop at age 43, Powell embarked on a second career working with Chester County’s Civil Defense, now known as emergency preparedness. He retired as its director in 2000 and gave up his long-time seat on the Chester County Election Commission in 2005. He remains active in his church, anti- poverty efforts, politics and the Chester County Voter’s League.

PRESERVING CABAL’S HISTORY

Today, Powell lives with his wife in a home near the Osborne house and still works long hours on his more than 300-acre farm. Gifted with a green thumb, Powell grows 12 varieties of grapes, manages bees for honey and to pollinate his crops, and continues his family tradition of making molasses. He also tends to 20 beef cows and a dozen or so chickens.

“All this is a hobby to me,” Powell said.

He works to preserve history, researching and collecting records, artifacts and stories from the Cabal area and wants to house the relics in a mini-museum by next year.

“I’m not an historian,” Powell may say, but his instant recollection of names, dates and historical events in his community and nationwide is uncanny. “I spent a lot of time sitting around with old folks,” he said.

15