Today marks the 108th anniversary of the resignation of 11 African-American teachers in Wilson, North Carolina, in rebuke of their “high-handed” black principal and the white school superintendent who slapped one of them. In their wake, black parents pulled their children out of the public school en masse and established a private alternative in a building owned by a prominent black businessman. Financed with 25¢-a-week tuition payments and elaborate student musical performances, the Independent School operated for nearly ten years. The school boycott, sparked by African-American women standing at the very intersection of perceived powerless in the Jim Crow South, was an astonishing act of prolonged resistance that unified Wilson’s black toilers and strivers.
The only known photograph of the Wilson Normal Collegiate & Industrial Institute.
The school boycott is largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes go unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9 henceforth, I publish links to Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please re-read and share and speak the names of Mary C. Euell and the revolutionary teachers of the Colored Graded School.
we-tender-our-resignation-and-east-wilson-followed
the-heroic-teachers-of-principal-reids-school
a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings
what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers
lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks
photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools
a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city
womens-history-month-celebrating-the-teachers-of-the-wilson-normal-industrial-school
respectful-petition-seeks-reids-removal
lucas-testifies-that-he-accomplished-his-purpose
there-has-been-an-astonishing-occurrence-in-wilson
the-independent-school-thrives
the-incorporation-of-the-w-n-c-i-institute
And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.
