Walking into history

The teacher who inadvertently inspired 720 students to walk out of Adkin High School on Nov. 20, 1951, did not immediately understand why her five seniors led the protest, one of the earliest actions in a fight for racial equality that forever changed a school system, a city and nation.

Following the march, that teacher, Beulah C. Davis Hussey, realized why her “visionaries” had to walk.

“You went seeking ideas as visionaries to bring about changes and you did just that,” Hussey said on the steps of the Lenoir County Courthouse to the nearly 50 students who reenacted the walkout Saturday.

The original activists staged a motorcade from the high school at 1216 Tower Hill Road — now the Charles B. Stewart Alumni Center — to the courthouse, the route they took almost 60 years ago, which Hussey vividly remembers.

On that fateful day, John Dudley, along with four other students he conspired with to organize the protest — Carolyn Coefield, Frederick Thompson, Calvin Thompson and Thomas Odell Loftin — abandoned Hussey in the school’s gymnasium around 9 a.m. when Dudley went to make the morning announcements.

The five were assigned to help Hussey prep the stage for a program in honor of American Education Week.

“John left me standing there and the rest of them ran behind him and then he said over the intercom, ‘Carolyn Coefield has lost her red pocketbook. If anyone has found it, please return it to the office,’ ” Hussey said, remembering Dudley’s coded signal for the walkout. “The whole school marched with him. I jumped off the stands, ran down the hall to the office and asked Principal Charles B. Stewart what in the world is going on. He said to me, ‘Leave them alone.’ ”

Stewart, although kept in the dark about the march, knew exactly why his students walked — for equality.

The students, who had met in an assembly without administrators or teachers the week before, had unanimously agreed to stage the protest if the Kinston City Board of Education didn’t satisfy their requests for better facilities when it met on Nov. 19.

“We were marching not for integration, but for the adequate facilities we felt we deserved,” said Charles Coward, an Adkin alumnus. “It was a momentous occasion in that we were not very highly thought of then.”

Despite the thoughts of many in the community, the school board responded, fulfilling all eight requests the students lobbied for within 18 months, which included a new vocational building, a state-of-the-art gymnasium — the largest for a black school in North Carolina at the time — and expanding and grading the school grounds to protect the area from flooding.

“I am just so proud to be a graduate of Adkin High,” said Eleanor Stewart, Class of 1955. Stewart walked alongside Reginald Stewart, Class of 1954, her husband and the son of Principal Charles B. Stewart.

“The passion that I have for Adkin and to know the struggle that we went through to make these changes, I am just so proud we had the leaders we had in the Class of 1952 and that they were able to pull it off.”

After the march Hussey connected the dots, when she remembered her students asking her, “What can we do at Adkin High School to bring about changes.” She had responded, “Others have addressed changes by (protesting).”

“It just came out of me spontaneously and I did not realize the consequences of my actions at that time, but you did,” Hussey said after the students honored her for her continued dedication to the class.

The protest resulted in improvements to Adkin High and its gymnasium but it viewed as doubly significant because it preceded the famous Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregated education facilities were not necessarily equal.

“This was the beginning of the civil rights movement in the U.S.,” said George Graham, Adkin alumnus and chairman of the Lenoir County Board of County Commissioners. “You are our heroes and you taught us the legacy.”

Graham commended programs such as the Pride of Rochelle, a mentoring effort that he said has followed in the footsteps of the Class of 1952; but Graham said future classes need more leaders to help the youth of today excel academically and stay away from a life of crime.

Coward agreed and said today’s youth has an opportunity to make a change as well.

“If we could stand up in those times and fight for what we thought we needed, these kids should be able to fight for what they think they need,” he said. “And then they should strive to get it.”

Wesley Brown can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wbrown@freedomenc.com.