Portrait of a black woman with short hair. She wears a white blouse and a black jacket.

Viola Gibson

A head-and-shoulders portrait of a black woman with short hair. She wears a white blouse and a black jacket with lapels.

When my grandmother was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 2017, I was asked to speak about her at the annual event. That made me start to think more deeply about who Viola Gibson was and her impact on our family, as well as on her community. I soon realized that there is a dearth of collected available information about this sharecropper’s daughter from Tennessee, even though there is an elementary school, a street and a city park named for her in her adopted home of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I am trying to rectify that. 

At this point, I am not sure what the product of my research might be. A local playwright is interested in my findings. A biography for young people seems to be in order — at least for use by the students at Viola A. Gibson Elementary School.  Perhaps a series of short stories. We’ll see…