Artemisia Bowden

Artemisia Bowden, educator and community activist.

Artemisia Bowden was a remarkable lay woman who took her Christian faith and Episcopal education directly into the world in order to transform it for the better. Bowden was born in Georgia to Milas and Mary Bowden and attended St. Athanasius’ parish school in Brunswick. She went on to study at St. Augustine’s Normal, Industrial, and Collegiate School in Raleigh, North Carolina and was graduated in 1900. She immediately began a career in teaching at a North Carolina parish school in Fayettville.

In 1902, Bowden was called to Texas by Bishop James Johnson in order to revive St. Philip’s Mission in San Antonio. Her task was to take control and upgrade the normal and industrial school associated with the mission, which had begun as an African Methodist Episcopal congregation. Her experience at St. Athanasius and St. Augustine’s, both Episcopal institutions, offered her reliable models for taking on the task with little or nothing to start except Bishop Johnson’s goodwill and encouragement and later the support of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Diocese of West Texas. St. Philips’s served mostly poor Black girls and under Bowden’s leadership it became a boarding school, and achieved junior college status in 1926.

Bowden used her personal connections within the church and the community to extend the reputation of St. Philip’s College, and for many years she was able to carry out the essential educational tasks with small local grants and aid from The Episcopal Church’s American Church Institute. The Great Depression hit hard, however, and in the face of reduced church funding, Bowden increasingly turned to her civic connections in the Black community and city government to keep St. Philip's afloat. In 1942, she reached a successful outcome in a long campaign to have the school incorporated into the San Antonio Independent School District as a city-supported and publicly-owned educational institution for Black youth. Bowden continued to direct the College as its dean until she retired in 1954. In addition to completing graduate work at Columbia University and The New York School of Social Work, Bowden received honorary degrees from Wiley and Tillotson Colleges.

Bowden served as president of the San Antonio Metropolitan Council of Negro Women and was founder and president of the city's Negro Business and Professional Women's Club. In 1947, she was named to the Texas Commission on Interracial Relations. She is credited for being primarily responsible for the introduction of a Black nursing unit in Robert B. Green Hospital, for securing Lindbergh Park for Black residents, and for establishing the East End Settlement House. She is remembered in the community today by the naming of Bowden Elementary School in San Antonio and Bowden Administration Building at St. Philip's College, which now serves a diverse community of students.

Artemisia Bowden died on August 18, 1969 and was buried from St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio.