Booker T. Washington High School provides the opportunity to underscore the significance of community gatherings and Commencement Week as a profound educational experience and an opportunity for educators to instill the concept of democracy. Other member schools, notably Magnolia Avenue High School in Vicksburg, MS, organized such festivities, and the motives were far removed from the pedantic 1950 school assemblies commonplace in traditional settings. In contrast, the intent of Booker T. Washington High School gatherings were far from the dissemination of knowledge; the programs sought to strengthen the belief in community, pride in accomplishment, and to embrace many of the basic tenets of progressive education

from Secondary School Study documents:
Rocky Mount Pupils Share in School Organization

            Our school faculty is organized to work in the following areas: Curriculum Adaptation, Guidance, Student Activity, and Evaluation.
            Each group finds itself dependent upon the other in order to get the total picture of the student according to our philosophy.
            We are just beginning to realize the possibilities before us. For instance; as we gain insight into what we really want the discovery has been made this year that our weakest link is the community tie-up with the school in the study of these problems. Next year we plan to have parent-teacher groups to concentrate upon these problems with us instead of upon money raising campaigns.
           We have come to where we are through the following methods:
1) Through many meetings with teachers and students, informal talks, conferences, etc. on school and personal problems the need has been discovered.
2) The entire city faculty which includes all of the fifty elementary teachers are a part of the general planning.
3) The supervisor has projected problems from factual evidence, and given entire freedom for democratic discussion.
4) We have not attempted to move any faster than our teachers see the necessity for moving or making changes.
5) We have not attempted to move without the understanding and sanction of the superintendent of schools who in turn interpret our procedures to the Board.

Booker Washington High School is planning a city wide approach to reading problems, proceeding from a philosophy of reading formulated cooperatively by teachers

from O. R. Pope, Principal

"We were part of a community and we helped each other. If there was a student who was not doing well, we would come together as a group to help. And while we were helping one another, we were learning from one another."
Helen Mercer Dixon

from Secondary School Study documents:
Booker Washington, Rocky Mount, North Carolina, O. R. Pope, Principal

from Secondary School Study documents:
            We think there is an ever-present need for closer cooperation between individuals, homes, schools and churches so we try to have our students learn how to establish good human relationships. We begin right in our classrooms by having our children think hard about their relations with the corner-store-keeper, the druggist, the chain store operator. Relationships are considered as groups work on simple investigations of such things as social security, accidents, labor, recreation, health, poverty and family living. We take them on visits to courts after they have studied the laws covering some conditions in the community. We do this because we want them to understand the conflicts that people have about their rights so that they can avoid such conflicts.

            We believe improvements in the governments of our school, city and nation can be effected most rapidly and for the good of all through intelligent participation by all people. This is why we begin early to teach our children to vote intelligently, to pay taxes and to assume the responsibilities of citizenship as rapidly as possible.

"The parents supported and worked with the teachers. They wanted us to gain responsibility, and student council became very important. This is where we helped to plan instructional activities. Mr. Pope was involved—anything that sought to bring further education to the students, Mr. Pope helped." Mary W. Dawson

Mary W. Dawson

Otis Cooper

Maggie L. Gilliam

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