Jobie Jackson Holderness
1900-2004
Co-owner and Operator of the Banner Market, Dedicated Teacher
As pictured in Eddie Faye Gates’s They Came Seaching
Jobie Elizabeth Jackson was born on September 27, 1900, in Sulphur Springs, Texas. She was the 13th of 14 children. Her father, Reuben, was born in Georgia around 1850, while her mother, Emma, was born in Texas in 1860. Both were likely enslaved in the area, though it is unclear for how long the town emerged as a popular place for fleeing slave owners during the Civil War. Freedom did not arrive in Sulphur Springs until Juneteenth, June 19, 1865.
After slavery ended, many newly freed men and women developed communities in the area. It is unclear how long Rueben and Emma knew each other before their 1974 marriage, but they overcame a lot. Like other areas of Texas’s remote countryside, newly freed people were frequently terrorized and killed during Reconstruction. Historian Barry Crouch estimated that 1% of Texas’s Black male population between the ages of 15-49 was killed violently during the first three years of Reconstruction. Sulphur Spring ranked high on the list of murders.
Attending one of Sulphur Springs’ two Black churches likely helped the young couple weather the troubles surrounding them. In 1885, they welcomed their first child, then regularly welcomed one every year or every year and a half. As the couple engaged in farming, more children meant help in agriculture.
Jobie’s childhood experiences are little known, but one formative experience rings clear. One month before she turned 15, two African American men (The Richmond brothers) were doused with coal oil and burned at the stake at Buford Park on the outskirts of town. One of the brothers sought to evade arrest and shot and killed the sheriff in the shuttle. While one of the Richmond brothers has already been shot and killed, ruining the shot, his body did not escape degradation. A group of 1500 white residents turned out to watch the striking of the match. The lynching made national news.
The Jackson family, valuing education as a means to a better life, emphasized its importance to their children. Jobie was a dedicated student. In 1919, she seized an opportunity for higher education when she enrolled at Bishop College, a historically Black college in East Texas, with funding from the United Negro College Fund. The school primarily provided grammar education for Black children and adults and offered high school and college courses. Like other parts of the state, the college faced teachers with the threat of white terrorism in its early years. Yet it persevered, and so did Jobie. She graduated in 1923.
Jobie initially desired to become an African missionary, but soon found her talents applicable in the United States and abroad. Jobie taught high school math for three years (1922-1925) at Lincoln High School in Port Arthur, Texas, a town just a couple miles east of Houston. For a time, Port Arthur had one of the largest oil refineries in the United States (run by Texaco).
Credit: National Museum of African American History and Culture
It is unclear why Jobie decided to move to Oklahoma, but once she did, she moved to Tulsa, where she quickly committed herself to educating children in the district. In 1925, she began teaching history and literature at Dunbar Elementary. In her interview with Eddie Faye Gates, Jobie shared how tough it was to teach at Dunbar because the segregated school had few supplies or funding from the city. Even so, she remembered the great sacrifices that many parents made to address the gaps. Jobie said, “In those days, education was highly valued” because it was seen as the way to rise out of poverty and into the American Dream.”[1] She, too, had lived this reality.
Jobie found her way in Greenwood. She joined several organizations, including two bridge clubs, the Debonaires, and the De Classe Club. In 1933, she served as President of the latter. Both bodies frequently raise money for charities, especially around the holidays. In April 1930, she and eight others became charter members of Omicron Sigma, a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated graduate chapter. She was at once deeply involved in the chapter, which did a lot of work with the local and national communities. For instance, in 1941, when she was President, the chapter’s support for Nannie Burroughs’s National Training School for Girls was cited in the sorority’s national newsletter.
On one faithful Sunday, Jobie met the love of her life, Lynn Holderness, at First Baptist Church. They were introduced to one another because they were both from Sulphur Springs. Differently, Lynn had arrived in the area when he was 15, brought as a teen with his family. He brought with him an entrepreneurial spirit that developed in Texas. When he was 10, he found a Sulphur Spring landowner to let him grow cotton on his land and split the profit. According to a write-up about him in the Oklahoma Eagle, by the age of 13, he was paying his own way. He was thirteen when his family moved to Oklahoma, and he decided that, rather than farming like his father, he would try his hand at pressing. He got a job in Tulsa’s central business district. In 1913, he became the first Black Tulsan to earn his license. The stationary engineer was required to operate the high-pressure boilers and steamers used in the industry. As he decided to work rather than go to school, He also used correspondence courses to catch up on his education. Lynn He then passed the education on informally to others. He engaged in this work when the Tulsa Race Massacre occurred.
During the attack on Greenwood, Lynn and other fellow garment workers hid in the homes provided for garment workers. His family’s home was destroyed. Unwilling to be cast down after the massacre, he provided funds to refurbish a hotel in North Hartford to house victims whose homes were destroyed. For five years, he continued to work at the downtown business. By 1926, he owned his own cleaning business, where he worked nights and weekends. By 1931, he finally made enough money to quit his daytime job and pursue work. He may have met Jobie the year before he made this decision. The 1930 census records them as husband and wife, though later newspaper accounts suggest that they married in 1933. Lynn bought land and constructed a grocery store, and Jobie joined him in these ventures.
Jobie told that “[Banner Mart] was more than just a store – it was a place where Black people in the community knew they could come for help.”[2] During her interview with Gates, she recalled that during the Great Depression in the 1930s, Lynn often permitted patrons to get items of credit, never knowing if or when would be paid. She suggested that all appreciated his generosity, and few took advantage. By 1941, all but $600 had been repaid.
Banner Market and Holdernesses also filled more significant roles in the community. People needing medical assistance knew they could go to Banner Market, and Lynn or Jobie would get them to a physician. If the requests turned into a large group, the couple often borrowed a hearse from one of the local Black funeral homes for transportation.
The Holderness’s commitment to the community was also evident in their work with youth. Lynn was a leader in the Boy Scouts and Jobie was instrumental in organizing the first Black Girl Scout troop in Tulsa (Troop No. 52). Jobie later held that while she initially faced a lot of red tape from the national headquarters, once the troop was recognized, it was highly successful and popular with parents and children. Jobie may have understated the troubles she faced because her close friend, Jeane Osby Goodwin, recorded in her Oklahoma Eagle column that Jobie persevered in the face of “disinterest, lack of funds, lack of trained leadership, lack of lay leadership, and every known obstacle.”[3] Others, too, knew of these troubles. In 1952, the Alpha Iota chapter of Zeta Phi Beta recognized Jobie’s remarkable Josie as “Woman of the Year.”
While doing this incredible work, Jobie continued learning and growing in her profession. She took graduate courses at Chicago Normal College, a historically Black college in Chicago (now Chicago State University). In August 1938, she earned a master’s degree at Colorado State College (now Colorado State University). Her continued education allowed her to become the librarian for Dunbar. In this role, as she had as a teacher, Jobie gave generously. She was frequently written up in the Oklahoma Eagle for going beyond teaching duty, which included using her funds to beautify the teacher’s lounge and providing her students with painting support to prepare painted flowerpots for the infirm in the hospital. She also collects toys and clothes for the state orphanage in Tate, Oklahoma. Jobie’s actions were likely motivated by her religious values. As a member of First Baptist Church, Jobie served as a Sunday school teacher, Finance Committee member, and Primary Department Superintendent.
Jobie retired but returned to the profession after Brown v. Board of Education as a substitute teacher. She quickly noted the difference between Greenwood schools and the white schools, which were better supported by the district. She told Gates. There were so many excesses in the white schools. Their labs looked like miniature NASA space centers. Why, just in the lockers at these schools, there were more supplies than we had in our whole, segregated North Tulsa Schools!”[4]
Jobie set out to fix societal ills, and in addition to her other work, was an active member of the Young Women’s Christian Association, an organization dedicated to ending racism and empowering women, and the Federated Women’s Clubs of Oklahoma, an organization created during the progressive era, endeavored to fix societies problems.
After Lynn’s death in September 1966, Jobie continued her community work while also managing Banner Market’s operations. Among other activities, Jobie supported the Douglass Freedom School development from the fall through mid-December 1970. The school emerged out of resistance to the Tulsa board’s last-minute decision to close Douglas Elementary (predominantly Black) instead of following through with the original plan to combine it with Lindsey Elementary (predominantly white).
In a 1971 interview that polled North Tulsans about the plan to integrate public schools in Tulsa, Jobie said little about integration, but remarked that there was little need for new schools. Instead, she argued for a better distribution of resources. The issue of inequality ran deep. Jobie reminded the public, “We [Greenwood] have been deprived so long that if they gave us all the money in the school system, we would still just be making up for some of the years we have been deprived.”[5]
Jobie managed Banner Market until 1982, when it closed because of Urban Renewal. Urban Renewal ended the growth of Greenwood, destroying countless historic buildings within the community and deeming them “blighted.” Later, she was forced to move to a nursing home after the city tore down her house in 2000 to make way for the Gilcrease Extension, which connected Interstate-244 to Interstate 44.
During her lifetime, Jobie received much acclaim. Her active support for Bishop College led to her being named “Mrs. Homecoming” in 1973. When Jobie turned 100 in 2000, she received honors from the sitting President of the United States, Bill Clinton. The citation was joined with others from the Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating and Tulsa Mayor Susan Savage.
Jobie died on May 10, 2004, leaving behind a rich legacy in community service, education, and civic engagement in Greenwood.
[1] Eddie Faye Gates, “Jobie Elizabeth Holderness,” They Came Searching: How Blacks Sought the Promised Land in Tulsa (Austin, Texas: Eakin Press, 1997), 104 (105-107).
[2] Gates, They Came Searching, 105.
[3] Jeanne Goodwin, “Scoopin the Scoop,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), February 28, 1952.
[4] Gates, They Came Searching, 106.
[5] “North Tulsans to Buck Education Elem. Desegregation Plans,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), October 28, 1971.
MORE BIOGRAPHIES
Citation: Brandy Thomas Wells and Brett Smith, “Jobie Jackson Holderness” in Brandy Thomas Wells, Ed. Women of Black Wall Street, 2025, https://blackwallstreetwomen.com/jobie-elizabeth-jackson-holderness/ (Access date).
Any use of images on the website must be attributed to the original site/copyright holder.
Sources:
“Jobie Holderness, 103, Remembered as ‘Lover of Community’” Oklahoma Eagle, (Tulsa, Oklahoma), May 20, 2004.
1900 Census [Sulphur Springs, Texas], accessed via Ancestry.com.
Taylor Nye, “Surviving Slavery in Hopkins County,” Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (June 6, 2020).
Thad Sitton, James H. Conrad, and Richard Orton, Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 14-15.
“United Negro College Fund Benefit Held,” Tulsa World (Tulsa, Oklahoma), October 4, 1980.
Georgetown College, “History of Bishop College,” (2012).
1930 Census [Tulsa, Oklahoma], accessed via Ancestry.com.
“Still a Headline Act at 99,” Tulsa World (Tulsa, Oklahoma), September 29, 1999.
Judith Linsley, Ellen Rienstrad, and Jo Stiles, Giant Under the Hill, A History of the Spindletop Oil Discovery at Beaumont, Texas in 1901 (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2002), 186–187, 199, 209–210.
Jeanne Goodwin, “Jobie Elizabeth Holderness,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), May 20, 2004.
“De Classe Club Begins Fall Activities,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), October 9, 1943.
“Garden Dansante Given in Honor of Nathaniel Dett,” The Call (Kansas City, Missouri), April 13, 1944.
“Deltas to St. Louis for Regional Meet,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), April 12, 1941.
“Efforts of Local Sorors Cited in National Newsletter,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), March 20, 1947.
“Greenwood Tour: Lynn H. Holderness – Success the Hard Way,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), December 13, 1951.
Gilcrease Museum, “Survivor Stories,” (February 6, 2023), Video. 2:02:53.
“Banner Market,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), August 22, 1942.
“Scoopin the Scoop,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), February 28, 1952.
“Tulsans Given Degrees,” Tulsa World (Tulsa, Oklahoma), August 15, 1938.
“Personally speaking by Marlie,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), December 22, 1955.
“Orchid of the Week,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), October 7, 1954.
Linda Wilson, “Oklahoma Federation of Women’s Club,” Oklahoma Historical Society.
“Urban Renewal in Greenwood,” Justice for Greenwood.
Steven Lackmeyer, “Urban Renewal,” Oklahoma Historical Society.
“Friends, Family Fete Holderness on Centennial,” Oklahoma Eagle (Tulsa, Oklahoma), October 5, 2000.