Jefferson County Alabama Genealogy Trails A part of the Genealogy Trails History Group

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JOHN HERBERT PHILLIPS, Superinendent of Public Schools of Birmingham, was born in Covington, Kentucky, December 12, 1853. In 1858, when he was not quite five years of age, his parents moved to Southwestern Ohio, and there he spent the uneventful days of boyhood on a farm. At an early age he attended the public schools of Ohio, where he received his elementary education.

In 1871 young Phillips was induced to take a position as teacher in a public school, near Charlestown, West Virginia, where he remained until 1875, when he entered the preparatory department of Marietta College, Ohio, from which institution he graduated with honors in 1880. Immediately upon graduation he was elected principal of the public high school at Gallipolis, Ohio, in a contest with twenty-five applicants. He was re-elected, with an increase of salary, in 1881-82, and had been elected for the fourth year, when he resigned to accept the work of establishing the present public school system of Birmingham, the success of which has won for him an enviable reputation in educational circles.

In August, 1885, Professor Phillips was elected president of the Chautauqua class of 1889, which numbers over twenty-five thousand members—a most worthy distinction, and an honor bestowed upon few men. He has recently delivered several addresses in connection with this work at Chautauqua, N. Y., Monteagle, Tenn., and De Funiak Springs, Fla.

Professor Phillips' work in building up the public-school system of Birmingham deserves more than a passing notice, for the success of his efforts have proven a factor in the rapid development of the city unsurpassed in power by blast furnaces, machine shops, coal mines, or any other industrial agency. Coming to Birmingham, in 1883, a stranger from the North, acquainted with no one in the State limits, to enter a contest for position where public officials were to sit as judge and jury, with a jealous public eye (oftentimes prejudiced), watching every movement, the effort was embarrassing, and only a man of good sense could have so modestly and, at the same time, resolutely won his way in so short a time to the good opinion of a majority of the electors. He was elected in a close contest over a gentleman well known for years in this community, and who had few, if any, personal enemies.

Professor Phillips at once saw before him a vast work. The school system here was in its infancy. In fact, he saw only the "warp," and knew that the "woof" was not; but he possessed the necessary requisites for the conflict before him—a steady aim, a strong arm, willing hands, and resolute will. He had a noble purpose, took it up bravely, bears it joyfully, and will lay it down triumphantly.

The writer has not room, in the brief space allotted him for this sketch, to state clearly and in detail the system adopted by Professor Phillips, which has placed the Birmingham public schools so far in advance of any other in the South in so short a time, but the system guides the young with the motto, "Nature holds for each of us all that we need to make us useful and happy, but she requires us to labor for all that we get." And this truth is impressed upon the young mind from the beginning. Professor Phillips rightly considers education development, not simply instruction or facts and rules communicated by the teachers, but a waking up of latent powers, a growth of the mind and a training of the child to think, and awakening its mind to observe, to reflect, and to combine. His system has reference to the whole child—the body, the mind, and the heart—hence his success.

The subject of this sketch is a man of practical ability, not a theorist. He believes that "life is action." He possesses knowledge not only of books but of men, and, let the world say what it may, it requires quick penetration and sagacity to acquire the latter, while labor may win the former.

Professor Phillips is a member of the Presbyterian Church, a Knight Templar, and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa. Socially he is a sought as a gentleman, the adornments of whose character brightens the way. He is a fluent speaker, a fine conversationalist, a learned man of his years, but his true dignity, sound discretion, and modest demeanor will not allow his inferiors in either regard to become embarrassed in his presence, hence, he may be called companionable, and, in the home of his adoption, he numbers among his personal friends men of all classes.—From the New South.

Professor Phillips was united in marriage December 27, 1886, with Miss Nellie T. Cobbs, daughter of Chancellor Thomas Cobbs, of Birmingham, a lady well known throughout the State as a superior vocalist, and one who is well fitted, by her domestic virtues and literary accomplishments, to be a helpmate and life assistant in his chosen work.