Mike Parker: The Little Red Pocketbook puts ‘separate but equal’ in perspective
Lee Holder, longtime history teacher at North Lenoir High School, was in his classroom Saturday morning, Jan. 25, when I met him to look over some items he wanted to donate to the CSS Neuse Foundation. Lee is retiring soon.
During our conversation, Lee told me about a 15-minute documentary his daughter Holly had made that focused on the Adkin High School walk-out that began on Nov. 20, 1951. I moved to Kinston in August of 1971, and in the nearly half-century I have lived here, I had never heard about this student-led protest against “separate but unequal education” that occurred just 20 years before my arrival. He promised to send me links to the video and to a website Holly set up with supplemental materials and lesson plans related to the walk-out.
I knew a little about Adkin High School. For instance, Adkin High was the first high school for African-American students east of Raleigh. The school opened in the fall of 1928 and it operated until 1970.
I have had the privilege of meeting some alumni of the school. They take great pride in the education they received through the hard work of dedicated administrators and teachers – despite the inferior facilities and educational supplies.
An 1896 court case, Plessy v. Ferguson, established the principle of “separate but equal.” The lone dissenter in the case, Justice John Marshall Harlan, blasted the majority decision, charging that “separate” denied equal protection under the Constitution.
On Nov. 20, 1951, Adkins students staged a walk-out to protest the inferior educational setting they were forced to endure. Their action came three years prior to Brown v. Board of Education and more than a decade before Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
The students planned the walk-out by themselves. They did not want any of their teachers or administrators to be implicated in their actions – nor did they want their teachers to try to stop them. When their concerns were ignored at the school board meeting the evening of Nov. 19, the walk-out was set for the next day.
Some of the concerns the students presented included: Adkin students had to pay $1.00 to take a typing class offered for free at the other schools; Adkin students had to use books discarded by Grainger High School; while Adkin students had to share a single microscope in its science class, each student at Grainger High had access to his or her own microscope; classrooms on the north side of Adkin had no blinds and the glass in broken windows had not been replaced.
The biggest grievance was the school board’s refusal to allocate funds to replace the Adkin gym that had burned. Having no gym meant the basketball team had to play nearly all of its games on the road. The board claimed it had no money to use to build a gym for Adkin High even though that body had just allotted funds to build a new gym at Grainger High.
The code for the walk-out to begin was “Carolyn Coefield has lost her red pocketbook. If anyone has found it, please return it to the office.” That announcement came at 9:10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 20, 1951. Seven hundred twenty students, from grades 7 through 12, quietly rose, exited the school, and marched to and down Queen Street on a path that took them to a recreation center on East Bright Street. They carried signs that read “Freedom,” “Equal Rights,” and “Education.”
When they arrived at the rec center, they reassembled as a group, and then went home. They did not return to school until the Monday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 26.
Galt Braxton, editor of The Kinston Free Press, chided the students in a front page editorial in the Tuesday evening edition. The editorial was titled “An Ill Advised and Dangerous Movement on Part of Negro Students.” Despite the editor’s chiding, the eight concerns the students presented to the board on Nov. 19 were all addressed within the next 18 months.
The next year after the walkout, school authorities designated funds for a new gym, locker rooms, two hygiene rooms, two home economics labs, and three vocational shops.
Holly gave me permission to share links to her website and film. “Little Red Pocketbook: The Story of the 1951 Adkin High School Walkout” is available at https://youtu.be/XUZnJ4_DanE. You can access her website complete with primary and secondary documentation, as well as lesson plans, at http://adkinhighwalkout.weebly.com. Her website also has a link to the documentary.
Mike Parker is a columnist for Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
