This astounding photograph depicts the teachers on staff at the Colored Graded School around 1918, when school superintendent Charles L. Coon slapped Mary C. Euell after principal J.D. Reid complained that she was insubordinate. Euell, who pressed charges against Coon and led a boycott of the public school, is seated second from left.
Information about the teachers is elusive. Only one, S. Roberta Battle, was a native of Wilson. Georgia native Georgia Burke spent about a decade in Wilson, and Virginia native Mary Jennings at least four years. The remaining women are not found in local census records or directories.
- G.M. Burks — Georgia Mae Burke. Georgia Burke boarded with Roberta Battle’s family during her time in Wilson. In 1921, she and Mary Euell were nearly involved in a second slapping incident in Wilson. In 1928, she moved to New York City to commence an acting career.
- L.B. Wayland
- M.L. Garrett
- S.R. Battle — Sallie Roberta Battle Johnson.
- S.D. Wiseman
- M.A. Davis
- M.C. Euell
- M.M. Jennings — Mary M. Jennings. Virginia-born Mary Jennings, 28, private school teacher boarded with the family of Hardy Tate at 208 Pender at the time of the 1920 census. In the 1920 Hill’s Wilson, N.C. city directory, she was described as the principal of Wilson Normal School, the independent school founded by black parents and businessmen in the wake of the boycott. In the 1922 city directory, she is listed as a teacher at the Wilson Normal School and resided at 307 [formerly 208] Pender.
- J.B. Pride
Photograph courtesy of Congressman G.K. Butterfield Jr., D-NC, a Wilson native. Thank you!
Thank you, for this exquisite picture, of such brave women. I am sure that some of these women, were my grandfather’s teachers.
Linda Tart
My mother (Margaret Watson Parks) was born 1910, she would talk to me about going to the grade school when she Was young.
My grandmother was born the same year! (You and I are related, by the way, via your grandmother Lucy Barnes Watson’s Barnes family.)
It is enlightening to hear of the brave Black women in Wilson, NC public school. Me Euell stood her ground against the principal, should be ashamed of himself, and the superintendent who is a coon.
Thanks for commenting!