Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute

No armistice in sight.

Buried under this peculiar title stack is an update on the Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute — the independent school founded by African-American parents and their supporters who were boycotting Wilson’s public schools.

The article notes that attendance at the independent school was 250 students versus fewer than 100 at the public Colored Graded School and offers a brief and inaccurate description of the incident that led to the boycott. (Mary C. Euell is described as “the Washington city teacher.” More about my attempts to learn more about Euell’s life later.) The aftermath is laid out nicely, though, noting that the discharge of J.D. Reid — called “the pouring of oil on troubled waters” — failed its goal, and teachers at the Colored Graded School had so few pupils that they had time to knit socks for World War I soldiers. (Those at the independent school, in contrast, were “having the times of their lives hammering progressive ideas into the heads of little pickaninnies.” One of which was my grandmother.) The writer wondered if support would falter when people realized they still had to pay a school tax, but admitted “at present there’s no sign of an armistice in sight.”

Greensboro Daily News, 17 November 1918.

The 106th anniversary of the school boycott.

Today marks the 106th 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 school boycott has been largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes have gone unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9, I publish links to these Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please 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

The teachers.

a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings

what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers

604-606-east-vance-street

mary-euell-and-dr-du-bois

minutes-of-the-school-board

attack-on-prof-j-d-reid

lucas-delivers-retribution

lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks

photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools

new-school-open

the-program

a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city

womens-history-month-celebrating-the-teachers-of-the-wilson-normal-industrial-school

And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.

Women’s History Month: celebrating the teachers of the Wilson Normal & Industrial School!

The Colored Graded School teachers who walked off their jobs in 1918 to protest abuse were Mary C. Euell, Georgia Burke, Sallie Roberta Battle, L.B. Wayland, M.L. Garrett, S.D. Wiseman, M.A. Davis, Mary M. Jennings, J.B. Pride, Glace [Grace] M. Battle, Sarah D. Hines, and Elba Vick.

Several of the teachers went to work at the community-funded Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute (also known as the Training School, the Independent School, the Normal School, and the Industrial School) when it opened later that year. The school lasted about ten years. Mary M. Jennings was listed as principal of the new school in the 1920 city directory, and I have found these additional teachers:

  • Wilhelmina Gaston, teacher, Wilson Training School, 1925

The “Armena Crawford” listed in the 1920 Wilson city directory is likely the same person. Willie Mena Gaston died 5 June 1929 in Wilson of pulmonary tuberculosis contracted “in the North.” She was 26 years old; was born in Wilson to Daniel Crawford of Alamance County, N.C., and Annie Whitted of Orange County, N.C.; was married to Augusta Gaston; was a housewife; lived at 605 South Spring Street; and was buried in Wilson [most likely Vick Cemetery.]

  • Willie Hargrove, teacher, Wilson Training School, 1925

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 606 East Green, Luvenia Hargrove, 40, widow, and daughter Willie, 20, public school teacher.

  • Hattie Langley, teacher, Wilson Training School, 1925

In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: Jarot Langley, 40, blacksmith at wagon factory; wife Lydia, 38; and children Hattie, 15, Thedore, 14, Marie, 12, Carnell, 7, Ruline, 6, Alcestus, 4, and Oris, 2.

The 105th anniversary of the school boycott.

Today marks the 105th 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 school boycott has been largely forgotten in Wilson, and its heroes have gone unsung. In their honor, today, and every April 9, I publish links to these Black Wide-Awake posts chronicling the walk-out and its aftermath. Please 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

The teachers.

a-continuation-of-the-bad-feelings

what-happened-when-white-perverts-threatened-to-slap-colored-school-teachers

604-606-east-vance-street

mary-euell-and-dr-du-bois

minutes-of-the-school-board

attack-on-prof-j-d-reid

lucas-delivers-retribution

lynching-going-on-and-there-are-men-trying-to-stand-in-with-the-white-folks

photos-of-the-colored-graded-and-independent-schools

new-school-open

the-program

a-big-occasion-in-the-history-of-the-race-in-this-city

And here, my Zoom lecture, “Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute: A Community Response to Injustice,” delivered in February 2022.

Flats.

By time illustrations were made for the 1930 Sanborn fire insurance maps of Wilson, the two-story Normal and Industrial Institute had reverted to use as an apartment building, marked as “flats” at 604 East Vance Street. The tall staircase my grandmother Hattie Henderson Ricks recalled is clearly marked on its front facade. She was 8 years old when the school opened in late 1918: “First of the year I went to school, and [then] I didn’t go back no more to the Graded School. They opened the Wilson Training School on Vance Street, with that old long stairway up that old building down there — well, I went over there.”

 

A morning with the Knights.

I spent a delightful hour or so yesterday speaking with students at Greenfield School about revolutionary African-American teacher Mary C. Euell and the Wilson Colored Graded School boycott. I appreciate the opportunity to share community history and stories of resistance with young people, and I thank Jennifer Johnson, Greenfield’s librarian, for the invitation.

Greenfield opened in the fall of 1970, the same semester I started first grade. That’s not a coincidence. After 16 years of stonewalling post-Brown v. Board of Education, Wilson finally fully integrated its school system in 1970, more or less at gunpoint. Some in the city’s monied class had seen the handwriting on the wall, and Greenfield was just one of many seg academies that sprang up across the South.

Fifty-two years is a long time, but no guarantor of change for the better. Greenfield, however, has moved along the arc of the moral universe, and the faces of the teenagers who listened so attentively and asked such thoughtful questions reflect its progress.

In case you missed it.

Last week’s Zoom talk about Mary C. Euell and the Wilson Normal and Industrial Institute may be one of my most enjoyable to date. I never tire of sharing Mary Euell’s story, and this occasion was made extra-memorable by the presence in the audience of descendants or relatives of sisters S. Roberta and Grace Battle, who were two of teachers who resigned with Euell; of Samuel H. Vick, who spearheaded the establishment of the alternative school; and of Sarah Hines, another resigning teacher, and her husband Walter S. Hines, a businessman who served on the Industrial School’s board. After my presentation, there was a freewheeling question-and-answer session that touched on a broad range of East Wilson matters and ended only because the library staff had to go on home.

My thanks, as always, to Wilson County Public Library, for its support of local history and commitment to amplifying the stories of Wilson’s African-American community. (See this month’s exhibit near the circulation desk prepared by Adult Services Librarian Naija Speight.) Special thanks to Local History and Genealogy Librarian Tammy Medlin and Assistant Director/Adult Services Manager Amanda Gardner. 

Filling in the gaps.

Last week in Wilson.

My thanks to Wilson County Historical Association, Wilson County Tourism Development Authority, Drew C. Wilson of Wilson Times (where you can read the accompanying article), Reginald Speight of Congressman G.K. Butterfield Jr.‘s office, and local elected officials and members of the public who took time to show interest and support.