Message from CCCC Board President Dr. Michael “Mickey” Hickman

This February, as Black History Month was celebrated nationwide, I had several occasions to talk about the CCCC and our current mission. I also had opportunities to discuss the Calfee Training School and its amazing history. I focused primarily on the history of that school between the years 1937 and 1949, and the individuals inside the Calfee family that make this particular period very special, in my humble opinion. To tell this story of the past, I want to use a presentation concept from today. If you read an internet article or visit a website, you might see different colored text called a "hyperlink" inserted that you can click on. You'll find that we use hyperlinks throughout this newsletter, and their purpose is to take you to additional pertinent sites that help explain and enhance the main narrative. I want to borrow that concept or technique of “hyperlinking” as I share this history.

In my ongoing research about Calfee, I came across the Pulaski School Board minutes from May 17, 1937, which included a partial listing of approved teachers' salaries in Pulaski for the 1937-38 school year. Monthly salaries of white teachers ranged from a low of $69 to a high of $84, while all the Black classroom teachers at Calfee Training School made $58 a month. There was one exception: Chauncey Harmon, a new teacher at Calfee, whose salary was fixed at $55 a month during his first year of teaching.

Chauncey Harmon was a Pulaski, VA native, and during his childhood he had been a very good student at Calfee Training School. Because he wanted to further his education and local schools only offered negro students an education through the ninth grade, his parents decided to enroll him into the Tuskeegee Institute in Tuskeegee, Alabama. The Tuskegee Institute was founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, an eminent black scholar for that time. Included in the history of Tuskeegee over the years are the famed Tuskeegee Airmen, subject of the Hollywood movie titled Red Tails, as well as the Syphilis Vaccine Controversy, where black men were duped and made unwitting subjects in a government-sponsored vaccine study (which could attribute to the current angst, mistrust, and reluctance to get vaccinated in current times.)

Washington advocated that Blacks concentrate on vocational and domestic science training as a means to establish economic footing, and as a “non-controversial means” to assimilate into white society. Hence the name “training school” became part of the title name for many segregated Black schools in the South. Washington was deceased by the time Harmon studied at Tuskeegee Institute. The school was now under the direction of Robert Russa Moton, a Virginia native, and another prominent black scholar there, George Washington Carver, who became a mentor to Harmon. After graduation, Harmon returned home to Pulaski, where he may have been the lowest paid teacher in the school system in 1937.

In the Spring of 1938, Harmon attended a conference for Black teachers in Eastern Virginia. While attending different sessions, he became intrigued by one specific speaker, a young NAACP attorney named Thurgood Marshall. Marshall was recruiting potential litigants to challenge the unequal conditions present in public education for blacks in the South; those conditions being unequal facilities for students and unequal pay for faculty (which certainly resonated with Harmon.) Harmon signed up despite the potential for harm both physically and professionally.

The Calfee principal at the time, Mr. Liverpool, resigned his position just before the 1938-39 school year, and Harmon was named his replacement. Even with this promotion, Harmon was committed to keeping his word with Marshall. He recruited another Calfee teacher, Willis Gravely, to be involved in the NAACP legal action at Pulaski. The school system was not pleased with the litigation when they became aware of Harmon and Gravely’s involvement. Shortly after the announcement of the litigation, Calfee Training School burned down! Harmon was able to salvage the educational year by utilizing local Black churches for classroom space. Harmon and Gravely were not offered contracts in the Spring of 1939, and their litigation ultimately fizzled out.

However, due to the efforts of Harmon and one Dr. Percy C. Corbin, a new school was lobbied for, and with the support of the community they got it! It was constructed and reopened in time for the 1939-40 school year, and still stands today as the future home of Calfee Community and Cultural Center! Dr. Corbin had gained cache as a local physician because he had successfully waged war against a Spanish Influenza “pandemic” around 1918. In 1947, Corbin picked up the equal rights banner and sued the school board over un-equalization of facilities; this case was lost at the federal district court level but was reversed and won at the appellate court level. Corbin had had the legal backing of the NAACP (Marshall and his lieutenants.) Harmon and Gravely had long left the Pulaski area by this time.

Chauncey Harmon would emerge again as the principal of the GW Carver High School in Salem, Virginia. Willis Gravely eventually left Pulaski and relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked as a high school teacher and continued his activism against unfair practices. By the way, one of Gravely's students at Wayne High School was named Nikki Giovanni. The poet, activist, and esteemed Virginia Tech professor recently presented an art piece to be placed in the future Willis Gravely Boardroom at CCCC.

The NAACP may not receive its just credit in the history of the Civil Rights Movement due to the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but much credit is due to this organization. The NAACP was formed out of the mind of W.E.B. Du Bois (and his backers,) a black scholar who rose to prominence because he disagreed vehemently with Booker T Washington’s philosophy. The Corbin case was a significant, encouraging win for the organization. In another potential legal interaction through Calfee, NAACP attorneys were on their way to solicit petitioners from the Pulaski community when they made a stop to help quell tensions after a protest at the Robert Russa Moton High School in Farmville, Prince Edward County, Virginia. The attorneys got their needed petitioner signatures in Farmville, and so no longer needed to come to Pulaski. The subsequent case became a part of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that overturned racial segregation in American schools.

The Calfee history is intertwined with significant events and people. Who would have thought that this segregated Black school in rural Virginia would have this much history in its background and have all these connections?

I leave you with one last nugget of Calfee history and a “hyperlink” connection. It cannot be denied that the NAACP had a prominent role in the school’s history; that organization’s number one person and the current Chair of the NAACP Board of Directors is Leon W. Russell. Leon is from Pulaski, Virginia and he attended Calfee grades 1 through 7 (“mic drop!”)