Oral history with Mr. Sank Powe

              Oral history with Mr. Sank Powe
F341.5 . M57 vol. 748, pt. 2
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Biography
Born in the Delta in Elizabeth, Mississippi, on April 20, 1942, Mr. Sank Powe was one of five children born to Sank Powe and Sallie Lee Lott Powe. Mr. Powe's parents encouraged and urged him to finish high school and pursue higher education. They were loving, but strict parents who brought their children up in the church and taught the children to work to help support the family. Growing up, Mr. Powe often worked in the cotton fields for meager wages.
When he was thirteen or fourteen years old, Mr. Powe had become strong and skilled enough to play and hold his own with the adult baseball teams in his neighborhood. As a child he was inspired by watching the Negro Leagues play baseball in Mound Bayou, a town which has the distinction of being an all- black town, and a more equitable society than the larger society in the 1950s and 1960s.
Mr. Powe attended Mound Bayou High School, from which he was graduated. He attended Jackson State University and Delta State University from which he earned a B. S. in social studies and completed graduate work in health and physical education.
Mr. Powe's career is multifaceted; he was a high school and college teacher and coach. In 1964, he was at Mound Bayou High School; from 1965 to 1970, he was at East Side High School; from 1970 to 1997, he was at Cleveland High School. He was a scout for the St. Louis Cardinals; he is currently a scout for the Cincinnati Reds. He co- wrote and published a biography, Grits, Guts, and Baseball.
Mr. Powe's civic activities and professional organizations include the Crossroad Diamond Club, the Cleveland High School Booster Club, the Delta State University Booster Club, the National Education Association, the Mississippi Education Association, the American Baseball Association of Coaches, and the Mississippi Association of Coaches.
He has been honored as the recipient of the National Baseball Coach of the Year, 1994; the Mississippi Baseball Coach of the Year, 1977; the Jackson State University Hall of Fame, 1991; the Crossroad Diamond Club, 1999; and the Mississippi Association of Coaches Hall of Fame, 1999. He was the subject
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