It is no surprise that the new cultural and performance venue on the south side of the square is named Two Sisters or that Lucy and Jessie Sue Bynum look down on all the activities in the park for their lofty portraits on the Safety First building. Few people living today remember these women, but we have all benefitted from their generosity and from the foundation that was set up in 2005 when Jessie Sue died.
If anyone was born with Scottsboro in their blood, It was the Bynum sisters. Lucy’s middle name was Scott, a reminder that she and Jessie Sue were the great granddaughters of Scottsboro founders Robert T. and Elizabeth Scott, the granddaughters of Robert Hugh Bynum and Charlotte Scott.
Their father. H. O. Bynum Sr., operated a mule barn and later a tractor business on the site of what is now the Warehouse 207 restaurant. “He never seemed to have any pocket money,” nephew Andy Skelton remembers, “because every time he got enough money together, he bought more land.” When H. O. Sr. was born in 1883, he was a third-generation Scottsboro Bynum in a town incorporated in 1860. He and his wife, Lora Allen, were the parents of four children: H. O. Jr. in 1914, a stillborn daughter in 1916, and the two sisters, Lucy and Jessie Sue in 1917 and 1918.
Their mother taught math at the high school before her marriage to Otis Bynum in 1912, making her ineligible for teaching. She raised the two daughters as if they were twins, and they were in fact “Irish twins,” born within a year of each other. Lora entered both daughters in first grade in 1922, when Jessie Sue was only four.
In 1924, the family moved into the C.K. Bradford house on Scott Street so the children would be close to school. The girls excelled at everything they touched. They were active writers and debaters in high school, and, like most college-bound young ladies in Jackson County in 1935, they attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery when they graduated.
Once in college, their paths diverged. Lucy studied English and Jessie Sue studied history. Lucy was editor of Prelude, the college literary magazine. She wrote short stories and acted in Shakespeare plays. Her sister excelled in music and international relations. She was voted most intellectual by her fellow students, played in many student recitals, and represented Huntingdon at student international relations events around the southeast. They graduated in 1939.
Immediately after graduation from Huntingdon, Lucy studied for her Master of Arts degree from the University of Texas and graduated in June 1940. She taught English in Talladega High School and Kingsport, TN. She did some coursework at the University of Michigan in 1942, and was on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1944 and at Sophie Newcomb College in 1945. In the Fall of 1946, she entered the PhD program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jessie Sue entered the University of Chicago and graduated with her Master’s degree in history in March 1941, continuing her studies toward a PhD. During the 1942-43 school year, she taught at Wesleyan College in Macon, GA, though she continued to take summer courses at the University of Chicago. She was home with personal illness in the falls of 1942 and 1943, and taught at Queen’s College in Charlotte, NC in 1948.
Lora Bynum’s health had been slow decline for some time, and she died in October 1950. After her mother’s death, Jessie returned to Scottsboro immediately to care for her widowed father. She was joined a few years later by her sister, Lucy, when Lucy completed her PhD in English at Chapel Hill.
Their father and brother continued to operate Bynum and Son Tractors. H. O. Sr. and the girls lived in the house on Backbone Ridge built in 1949, and H.O. Jr. remained in their old family homeplace on Scott Street. The two sisters settled into life in their old hometown that included teaching, lecturing, and traveling. They spent the summer of 1955 touring Europe, and Lucy taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) 1955-1957.
Their father died in 1965, and the sisters moved out of the family home and built their house on Buchanan Street. Their friend Nelle Harper Lee slept in the front bedroom of their Buchanan Street home often enough that it has always been known as the Harper Lee Bedroom. They were on Broadway in New York to hear Robert Goulet sing “If Ever I Should Leave You” to Julie Andrews in the original Camelot, and to see Lawrence Olivier play MacBeth opposite his wife Vivian Leigh in 1955. If their piles of Playbills are any indicator, they enjoyed many trips to New York and saw some of seminal performances of the 20th century. Some of these Playbills are framed in the hallway of the Green Room at Two Sisters Square.
Lucy continued to teach. When Northeast Alabama Junior College (now Northeast Alabama Community College) opened in 1965, Dr. Lucy Bynum was one of three PhDs that Dr. Knox featured in a discussion of new hires for the 1968 school year.
The 1970s were hard on the Bynum family. Their brother exhibited increasingly antisocial behaviors that culminated in his conviction for causing a bomb to be planted in the car of Lawyer Loy Campbell in 1972. H.O. was convinced in 1974 and found guilty, reporting to prison in 1975 after appeals failed. He died in prison in 1980, leaving an estate that was difficult to settle and losing his portion of the Bynum estate in lawsuits.
As the sisters began to emerge from this nightmare, they learned that the neglected spot on Lucy’s arm was melanoma, and Lucy died in 1983. She was 66 years old. Jessie Sue lived a quieter life without her lifelong companion. She worked in her yard and cared for her dogs. She lived another 22 years and died in 2005 at age 87.
Lucy and Jessie Sue’s father always cautioned them against men who would want to marry them for their money. And they listened. Neither Bynum sister ever married. These two private women played such a significant part in the growth of Scottsboro by creating subdivisions and providing land for industrial growth. But their real gift to Scottsboro was the Bynum Foundation.
The Bynum Foundation was defined legally in Jessie Sue Bynum’s will in 2005. To ensure that grant requestors met her criteria she chose her nephew Mark Scott Skelton and great nephew Attorney Bill Tally to administer the Foundation. After Mark Scott’s death in 2015, Mark’s sons Andy and Scott Skelton, along with Andy’s children Graham and Colleen, and Bill Tally, became the administrators of the Foundation. This group has reviewed many grant applications and faithfully adhered to the criteria that Jessie Sue established. For 20 years, the Bynum Foundation has been a funding source for more than 39 grant requesters ranging from municipalities to educational foundations, and they have distributed more than $4 million.
Think about it. If the sisters had married and distributed their family wealth to their children, much that we take for granted today simply would not exist, not the least of which is Two Sisters Square, the state-of-the-art performance and cultural venue in the heart of old Scottsboro. How lucky are we in Scottsboro that the Bynum sisters regarded all of Scottsboro as their children.
About the series:
This is the fifth in a series focusing on the murals painted by artist Donald Walker on the walls of Two Sisters Square recognizing musicians, writers, and actors from Scottsboro. Two Sisters Square is a nonprofit arts venue funded through the generosity of the Bynum Foundation whose founders, Lucy and Jesse Sue Bynum, are the facility’s namesakes. Events at the Square are funded by donations from event attendees, but the shortfall from those donations is funded by direct contributions from the community. Please consider contributing by mailing your donation to Two Sisters Square, PO Box 74, Scottsboro, AL 35768 or by giving online at givetwosisters.com.
