I believe that Miss Dee affiliated with the Young Women’s Christian Association as fully as possible, throughout her career.  In those days, many college campuses with female students had YWCA Chapters.  There may have been a chapter in Tuscaloosa at the time she was enrolled at the University of Alabama, but I have not been able to find actual information yet. 

Writing in 1960, after interviewing Miss Dee, who would have been 79 years of age at the time, Alabama Journal reporter Katharine Tyson wrote “During a YWCA summer conference, she vowed to become a missionary to Japan, but found due to her age she was too young for the position. But holding steadfast to her determination to go to Japan she planned to continue teaching until she could get an appointment.” The newspaper article did not make it clear when this call to missionary work occurred.

After she completed her work at the University of Alabama, Miss Dee had returned to Livingston to teach for Julia Tutwiler at Alabama Normal School in 1901-02.  Sources at the University of West Alabama, formerly Alabama Normal School, indicate that there is no evidence in the archives of a YWCA chapter on campus during the 1900-1901 school year, but there was an active chapter in 1901-1902, the year that Miss Dee returned to Livingston and taught there. Was she involved in creating the chapter? I can’t really say, but when she returned, YWCA was active on campus.

Another source indicates that Miss Dee received the call to missionary work “while teaching with Julia Tutwiler at Alabama Normal School.”  Because it was seven years after she taught at Alabama Normal School in 1901-1902 before she was actually admitted to The Methodist Training School in Nashville for missionary training in 1908, I have examined her activities between those dates as carefully as I can to try to figure out exactly when she received the call to missionary work.

It is clear that she actually worked at Alabama Industrial School for Girls in Montevallo as secretary of the YWCA on that campus in 1907.  And in that capacity, she actually was involved in organizing summer conferences.  Miss Tyson’s Alabama Journal article also mentions that after completing her work at Columbia, Miss Dee returned to Macon County and taught in a one room school, grades one through twelve.  That would likely have been the one room school at La Place, near the place of her birth and the residence of her grandmother.  It is not clear how long she taught there.

However, in 1906, records from Birmingham Southern indicate that Miss Dee, along with her friend, Rosalie Tutwiler, an alumna of Southern, visited the campus of Southern University in Greensboro, Alabama, and that both were on faculty at Alabama Normal School at the time.  Miss Dee’s younger half-siblings were enrolled at Southern at the time.  (Southern is a predecessor of Birmingham Southern College.)  Records from the University of West Alabama neither confirm nor disaffirm whether Miss Dee was on faculty there in 1906.  The records of faculty members for that year are missing.

Katharine Tyson also reported:

“Several months later, on Christmas Eve, to be exact, her uncle who had taken over the management of the farm announced all the Negroes on the farm were intoxicated. Then and there, Miss De Bardeleben says after a sleepless night she made up her mind, she was needed far more at home to teach among southern Negroes than she was needed in Japan.”

She goes on to state that Miss Dee tried to devise ways of teaching in her own county, but eventually her application for missionary training was accepted.

After carefully examining all the historical data that I have been able to locate, I believe that Miss Dee attended the YWCA summer conference and was called to missionary work during the year that she taught at Alabama Normal School with Julia Tutwiler immediately after completing her studies at the University of Alabama.  She was only 20 years old at that time, and it makes sense that she was too young to train for missionary work at that time.  She planned to keep teaching, until she was eligible, so she enrolled at Teachers College at Columbia.  She returned to La Place and taught at the one room school there, as reported by Katharine Tyson. It is not clear how long that continued, but at some point, she apparently returned to Livingston, and taught there in 1906, at least.  There is evidence that her family had moved to west Alabama by then, where her younger half-siblings were enrolled at Southern University. Then in 1907, she served as secretary for the YWCA chapter at what is now Montevallo University.  And in 1908 she enrolled for missionary training at The Methodist Training School in Nashville. I will pick up on her work there in another essay.  Her connections with YWCA would continue throughout her career.