Week 36 – Education – Superior Cunning
Our public schools are the yardstick or the community strength and progress. The philosophy and character of the parent is reflected in the classroom – from these reflections are molded great or small images.
Historically, the pervasive opinion in the white community was that black schools were inferior, black teachers lacked training, and black students could only learn the most basic subjects. Time and again white political leaders did not comprehend the setting and missed the easy answers: “The answers are straightforward”, Jonathon Tilove wrote in his article In Black Schools Before Brown, Keys to Success: “Dedicated teachers. Strong principals. Order. Discipline. High expectations. Community and parental support.”
Elias Blake, Jr. Risley High School graduate and President of Clark Atlanta College recalls how Risley High School students built their own gymnasium. It was an act of self-help, he says, but also cunning. What the white superintendent and school board would see in that handmade gym were young blacks bring trained for manual labor. But, Blake says, ‘They were never brought into the main building where the laboratories were and where Mrs. Mollette was teaching Shakespeare, Thoreau, Emerson, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen.” Risley High School teachers, Blake says, were “doing college prep undercover.”
In the 1950s black teachers were better educated than white teachers because Southern states paid for the graduate education of black students who went north to school, rather than admit them to their state universities. Many black educators returned home with Ivy League degrees. In the profiles published in Benjamin Allen’s book Black America Series: Glynn County Georgia Glynn teachers at Risley had advanced degrees from over 25 national universities. Five Risley graduates went on to be Presidents of leading Historic Black Colleges (years served):
Cornelius V. Troup, Ft. Valley State College (1945-1965)
Elias Baker, Jr., Clark College Atlanta (1977-1987)
William H. Dennis, Jr. Morehouse College (1953-1965)
Rufus Patterson Perry, Johnson C Small University (1957-1968)
Timothy C. Meyers, Savannah State (Interim President, 1949).
Risley alumni Richard Perry and Marie Broadsdale pointed out that today students who attended Risley are well informed on black history because in the 9th grade “we had a course on Negro history [based on a] book written by Carter G. Woodson. Taught by the late CV Troup.”
I remember vividly … Negro History. It was not just a book, it was a part of our studies. It was included in our studies and we had to study that book just like we studied geography, just like we studied math, English, science, all of these were part of our curriculum. It was not just something you just took if you wanted. You had to study Negro history.
Did the teachers make Risley what it was? “Of course!” answered alumnus CA Lee.
Alumni recalled, “We really knew our teachers and they knew us. Teachers were part of our culture. We saw them at church, we saw them at the grocery store. Our parents knew them.” One alumna recalled that “It was a must that the teachers had to visit each student’s home before the year was out.” When Risley’s principal Mr. Wilkerson visited homes in Dixville, he sat on a front porch, chatted with parents, and acknowledged the student who rode by on their bikes. At school “When he walked down the hall, you knew his presence. He wasn’t cruel or unkind and sometimes he didn’t have to say word. You knew you better be ready to account for your whereabouts, especially if you did have a hall pass.“
There was a mantra the Risley alumni repeated, “This is our school, these are our kids, they’re going to learn above and beyond what that book says and they are going to learn what that books doesn’t say.” In other words, “We are a community and everybody is going to get the benefits of what we have to teach you.” (CA Lee, Montford)