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Arikan people. They were all teaching lessons in courage, strength, perseverance, morals, and ethics by there very lives for all to see.

Dr. Evans is a profoundly shining example of Afrikan potential in action. Afrikan womanhood, and Maatian principles (truth, justice, righteousness, harmony, balance, order, propriety, and reciprocity).

Dr. Evans was born in Aiken County. South Carolina in 1875 to Andrew and Harriett Evans. Her maternal grandmother was Edith Corley, the daughter of Henry and Julia Willis who had left Pennsylvania in the early 1800's as "free Blacks" but were captured and ended up in a group of enslaved Afrikans. Little is known of the reasons why they were moving South or what happened to them subsequently. What we do know is that Andrew and Harriett ultimately had three children, Matilda Arabella (the oldest). Andrew (Andy), and Aurora.

In order to help the family make money, she mowed hay for the Quaker Abolitionist Schofield family. Her positive qualities caught the eye of Martha Schofield who became one of her important mentors during her life. Martha had started the Schofield Normal and Industrial School in Aiken in 1870 and was frequently harrased and threatened by racist, small-minded whites. Martha also encouraged young Matilda to continue her education at the Oberlin College in Ohio which was not only the first coeducational college in the United States and the first to award a college degree to a woman (in 1841), but from the time it was founded in 1833, had a policy of admitting students regardless of race.

It had been young Matilda's desire since early childhood to go to Afrika as a missionary of some kind. In order to achieve this goal, an education was necessary.

According to some documents, she went to Philadelphia first to earn money for college. These accounts state that she ultimately arrived at Oberlin with $65 and soon ran out of money. All accounts relate that she earned money waiting tables and soon after, earned a full scholarship. Some accounts also relate that she taught for one year after graduation in Augusta,Georgia with Lucy Laney and taught a second year at Schofield before going to medical school.