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Magnolia Avenue Teachers and
their Work with the Secondary School Study

Magnolia Avenue High School teacher with students
l-r: Clinton McGuire, Philip Williams,
Miss Hazel V. Connor (teacher of physics), Bernard Dennis

“One of the most outstanding attributes of Magnolia Avenue High School was its teachers. They were fantastic and knew how to draw out the best from students and from the facility (even though the school was inadequate in comparison to the white schools). These teacher fulfilled many roles, but fundamental to their work was that they were always encouraging us to learn. They did not take pride in bestowing punishment; they encouraged and whetted our appetite for learning.” Edgar E. Smith

 

The Secondary School Study was establishing new roles for educational administrators and teachers. Democratic ideals served to define the experimental efforts of schools. The principal provided direction and instilled confidence while also fostering flexibility and extending authority among the staff who were encouraged to reexamine their teaching methods and to explore new configurations for the secondary school curriculum.


Thelma Rush

  

 

“Professor Bowman was such a dynamic principal and exemplified the finest aspects of educational leadership. He ensured that all students would receive the best education possible even though we were in a segregated system. Magnolia Ave High School was a vibrant place and, when he died unexpectedly during the summer of 1944, the school was renamed in his honor.”
Thelma Rush

   


Principal J. G. H. Bowman (1874-1944)
served as principal at "Old Magnolia"
and Magnolia Avenue schools from 1906-1944.
Mr. Bowman took advanced coursework at Fisk University,
Atlanta University, and the University of Chicago.

from Secondary School Study documents: Action Taken in Magnolia
"The reports released by Magnolia describe in detail how the principal and his staff worked together. One sees in the reports the influence of effective and friendly leadership on the progress of a school’s program."
from A Report of Teacher-Pupil Activities, 1942
                                   
 

“Mr. J. G. H. Bowman, Principal of Magnolia Avenue High School, Vicksburg, Mississippi was asked by the Study office to represent the Study at a meeting of Texas principals at Marshall and Karnack, October 23-25. An invitation from Mr. D. B. Taylor, Special Supervisor with the Texas Department of Education, gave the Study this opportunity. Mr. Bowman writes as follows about another meeting: ‘On several occasions Mr. Easom has called the attention of the teachers of the state to the little report I made of our pupil-teacher activities last year. I was surprised Sunday morning—when, as a result of Mr. Easom’s talks with the teachers, I received a long distance call from Southern Christian Institute, Edwards, Mississippi, requesting me to come over Monday night and talk to the teachers about the Secondary Study and our own activities.’

‘I went, of course, and we sat in a circle as I talked informally with a group of thirteen teachers including the president. I say with the teachers, because we all talked and asked questions of each other. I told them all I knew about the Study and about our own connection with it. They seemed greatly interested and said they enjoyed the meeting very much indeed. I told them that we are taking up the problem of evaluation this year, and President Long suggested to his teachers that they study the same problem and compare results at the close of the session.’”

from To and From Our Schools, Vol. 1 No. 1, November 1941
           
     

Carrie Reynolds

“Mr. Bowman was a strict man. If you heard him clear his throat, you knew that he meant business. He commanded respect and we gave him respect.” Carrie Reynolds
    


Alyce Shields

“The teachers and the students greatly admired Mr. Bowman. But when he would use the term “girlie”—that was never good. And when Mr. Bowman would clear his throat, you could hear a pin drop. Nobody was seen in the halls or in the corridors.” Alyce Shields
                           
           


Principal Katie M. Washington,
a participant in the 1944 Atlanta Workshop, taught a sociology class whose "activity project" sought to obtaining funding for a federal housing project.

 “Miss Katie Washington was highly admired—she respected you and you respected her (with a bit of fear—she was strict). But she became a mother figure as one of our teachers.” Saltine Austin Tyler

     

 

"While it may have been rare at that time to have a female principal, Katie M. Washington kept order. She didn’t have any trouble keeping the school focused on learning and maintaining discipline.”
Frances Pearline Williams


Frances Pearline Williams
             


from Secondary School Study documents:


“Mrs. K. M. Washington is among the pioneers in our faculty who began experimenting with the activity program. She attended the Study Workshop in Atlanta in 1940, and her [social science] classes have since worked with a number of interesting projects. A community activity of her sociology class was largely responsible for an attempt last year on the part of representative citizens to secure a federal housing project for Vicksburg.

This year the sociology class, studying Direct Ways to Build up a Healthy, Intelligent, and Morally Strong Community, chose as one of its objectives ‘to get first hand information about diseases which prevent the development of healthy bodies.’ The study finally led to a desire to know more about venereal diseases—the causes, dangers, controls, prevalence among Negroes, and to what extent they may be inherited, etc. They consulted standard references, read health pamphlets, and talked with adults about their projects. This did not satisfy fully their thirst for knowledge, so they decided to go further. By unanimous vote the class extended an invitation to Dr. Willard H. Parsons, member of the staff of the Vicksburg Clinic, to appear before the class and discuss the subject of venereal diseases, with emphasis upon the points mentioned above.”

from A Report of Teacher-Pupil Activities, 1942

 “The teachers asked for and received our respect,
and they taught us to respect ourselves.” Alyce Shields

New Magnolia Avenue teachers for the 1944 school year:
L-r: Mrs. Ryals, Mrs. M. B. R. Bowman, Mrs. Parrott, Mr. Phelps, Mrs. Bessie Lindsey Jackson, Mrs. E. B. Williams, Mrs. Custard

Orelia Peterson Crump

“Teachers were easy to approach. They appreciated us and wanted us to achieve the best. They didn’t want us to miss anything. They knew what we were going to face when we finished high school, and they would do anything to ensure that we were well-prepared. If a student missed something during class, it was just a matter of waiting until the end of day and there was always a teacher available to help.”
Orelia Peterson Crump

                                             

“If you needed extra help or if you had a problem, there would always be a teacher willing to spend the extra time. The teachers were truly committed and wanted us to learn.”
Carrie Reynolds


 “The teachers were caring. Magnolia Avenue/Bowman High School was a place that you wanted to go. The teachers made us feel comfortable and convinced us that we were somebody. They had a sense of our needs.” Frances Pearline Williams

 

from Secondary School Study documents:

English for All Groups “With the view toward making the study of English more functional and less traditional, the courses in the eleventh and twelfth-grades were reorganized along these lines:


In the eleventh grade classes no books of literature were purchased this year as in former years. Instead, the students and teacher attempted to make a study of certain modern problems. To do so, the students contributed small sums to purchase books that might be used for such a study to supplement those in the library. These books, others borrowed from the library, and the texts in literature used in past years were placed in the classroom so that ample references might be close at hand. The subjects chosen for study during the year were Transportation, The Negro, Crime. Some of the books purchased for these studies were Anna Lindberg’s North to the Orient, Benjamin Brawley’s The Negro Genius, Victor Page’s A B C of Aviation and many others.”

from “A Report of Teacher-Pupil Activities, 1942”


    


J. R. Buck, Jr.

from Secondary School Study documents:

“Mr. J. R. Buck, one of our teachers of the social sciences, attended the Workshop at Hampton Institute in the summer of 1941 and . . . formulated a tentative program for several of his classes. The central point in the tentative program was a plan to interest the children in working cooperatively with the teacher and with each other in securing information about subjects of interest to them. To put it simply, it was a planned attempt to depart as far as might seem advisable at the present time from the teaching of abstract subject matter from some author’s text book, and to launch out as far as might seem safe in the direction of having children select topics in which they are interested and gather information about these topics from all available sources.

Mr. Buck reports that the following procedure was carried out in each of his classes:
‘The children selected their own units of work, based on interest, current importance, and supposed ability of the class to carry through the cooperative enterprise. They decided to work in groups which they themselves formed, each group assuming responsibility for a definite portion of the group enterprise.
‘Each group had its chairman, secretary, and councilman. After a reasonable length of time each group made its report to the entire class.
‘After the units were selected and the groups formed as indicated above, the students were asked to discuss . . .
‘What educational benefits do you hope to derive from this unit? What contribution can a study of this unit make toward your immediate or ultimate well being? What particular weakness of yours do you think can be strengthened by a study of this unit?’”

from “A Report of Teacher-Pupil Activities," 1942

Thelma Rush
  “What Magnolia Avenue teachers taught us was not just academic work; they taught us about everyday life and what had been happening to us as black people. Mr. Buck, especially, talked to us in the civics class about how the democratic process should work and what it meant to be in a real democracy. He described how he grew up, and the sacrifices his family made for him. Mr. Buck was helping us understand what our families were doing for us, and he was ensuring—insisting—that we take the opportunity to learn and to make something of ourselves.” Thelma Rush
                                             
         

“Mr. Bowman and Mr. Buck, while greatly admired by the students, both had a heavy hand. Discipline was greatly instilled and communicated to the students. Any punishment at school was often received at home as well. Students were asked and were expected to live up to a standard of conduct, and we did.”
Frank Crump, Jr.


Frank Crump, Jr.

Edgar E. Smith
  
                             
“Our teachers were tough but also 'oh so gentle.' They were tough in the sense that they wanted to draw out all that they thought we had, all of our potential. But they knew there was a limit AND they knew when to stop pushing. The teachers were not trying to make everyone the same; rather, they were committed to making us become the best we could be.” Edgar E. Smith  
                       


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