“Y’all stay here where y’all belong” Part 5

By: Jacquelyn Simmons

My Friends,

This child of The Living God must be honest and admit that all of the white students, minus one, enrolled in my classes at Neville High School were very very cooperative, helpful and kind to me. Some of them went “out of their way” to display their kindnesses and respect. For some unexplained reason, only one or two students from Carroll were enrolled in my classes. The one disrespectful student displayed his disrespect during the last couple of days in the school year and afterwards…

One student whose father was famous for being “brave enough” to handle Black-oriented court cases, especially during so-called segregation days, brought me one of his “dad’s” adding machines which helped me tremendously in averaging grades. He said he had gotten his dad’s permission to do so (smile).

Even though all schools in the Monroe City School System were supposedly supervised by the same governing body, we discovered that Neville’s grading system was completely different from Carroll’s. Their system was more student-oriented than ours. Why??????

Our students’ everyday grades at Carroll and Lincoln Elementary School located, during that time frame, next door to Carroll, including weekly exams were only counted as one-half their grade, and their final test grades the other half. For example: A certain student known to me, maintained a daily “A” average, but when the time came to take her final examinations, the doctor had confined her to remain home due to “chickenpox”. After one of her parents reported her plight to school officials, her teachers were instructed to give her “F’s” on all of her final examinations which by God’s grace and mercy, at least let her final grades in all courses become “C”. What happened to other students who did not have high averages and had serious plights, also??? What heart breakers for their students and families? But God!!!!

And now the entrance of God-sent, Rev. Richard Miles, who during that same time frame, was employed as a guidance counselor at Carroll High School: God placed it on his heart to adopt a group of high academic achievers in the previously discussed child’s same class and to guide them to higher achievement heights. Even though the previously mistreated young child’s grades had drastically fallen, God evidently made him aware of her scholastic abilities, anyway. Soooooo, he included her in a high achieving God hand-picked group of students and continued to guide them to higher academic heights. When they reached Carroll High School, he made sure they were programmed to attend classes under God’s hand-picked teachers who accepted his challenges to make sure that they were taught on a higher level.

One of our pride and joy students was their classmate, Gustavia Evans (member of the Whittey family), one of our protege’s who was transferred to a famous academy located on the Eastern Seaboard. Later, the previously discussed mistreated student was awarded a summer scholarship in mathematics to attend Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. God did it!