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Jun 14, 2023

Historic tribute set for Black leaders June 24

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Village Voices performer Jared Hennings portrays Charles Newton, the first Black graduate of Alton High School who became one of the first Black teachers in the St. Louis Public Schools. Newton and his wife, Sara Newton Cohron, will be honored with a gravestone dedication June 24 at the Alton Cemetery.

Velva Parker with Village Voices portrays Sara Newton Cohron at a previous event. Cohron and her husband, Charles Newton, will be honored with a gravestone dedication June 24 in the Alton Cemetery.

ALTON — A special gravestone dedication for Charles Newton and Sara Newton Cohron is planned June 24 in Alton.

Charles Newton was the first Black person to graduate from Alton High School. Sara Newton Cohron was the founder of the Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center.

The Newton/Cohron gravestone dedication is set for 10 a.m. Saturday, June 24, at the Alton Cemetery at East 5th and Vine streets; participants should use the Vine Street entrance. The graves were unmarked until September 2022.

Charles Newton, a professor, graduated from Alton High School on June 24, 1873. The dedication presented by the Hayner Public Library District and Vintage Voices will be on the 150th anniversary of his AHS graduation.

Born in December 1855, in Missouri, he died Sept. 17, 1886. He graduated from Shurtleff College in Alton and became one of the first Black teachers in the St. Louis Public Schools. He later became principal of the Colored School No. 1 (also called Dumas).

Sara Newton Cohron was born Jan. 17, 1853, in Berlin, Ohio; she died Jan. 1, 1918. She remarried after Newton's death and helped found the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home, which later became the Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center at 2612 Annie Malone Drive in St. Louis.

She was an accomplished teacher in St. Louis and East St. Louis, serving as a delegate to the Berean Baptist Sunday School Convention.

"She had what was essentially a prenuptial agreement for her second marriage in 1891, to Rev. John Lewis Cohron," said Hayner Library's Lacy McDonald, genealogy and local history manager.

"I will talk a little bit about the process of how we found out that the Newtons were buried in the cemetery, and the process of getting the gravestone," McDonald said. "Sadly, despite their significant achievements, there was nothing to mark their graves."

Also buried at Alton Cemetery, in the same block and lot with the couple, are Cohron's mother Anna Woodson, Newton's sister Elvira Robinson and his niece Harriett Isadore.

Vintage Voices and the library district worked with Ralph Bowles at Gent Funeral Home, who generously donated a marker for the couple's graves.

At the dedication, Vintage Voice's Jared Hennings will portray Newton and Velva Parker will portray Cohron, reprising their Vintage Voices roles.

Keisha Lee, CEO of Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center, will speak about Cohron at the dedication. Other guests will include Alton Mayor David Goins, who will read a proclamation, and the Rev. Kelvin Ellison from Alton's Union Baptist Church who will give the invocation and benediction. Newton's funeral was held at Union Baptist Church, where Cohron's second husband was a guest minister several times.

Alton School District Superintendent Kristie Baumgartner also will say a few words about Newton and his legacy.