The Fruits of His Labor

By John B. Davis

THE FRUITS OF HIS LABOR:

The true story of Professor Edmond Jefferson Oliver, Principal of Fairfield Industrial High School, its staff, its students, community, state of Alabama, the Nation and the World!!!

By John B. Davis, Class of 1951

Fruit results from planted seeds, when seeds grow, they bear fruit,
Galations 5:22, 23

We were taught that the fruit that you have to reach for is the sweetest!!

The fruits of his labor are many: the world is blessed with Fairfield Industrial High School (F.I.H.S.) graduates eschewing their accomplishments through serving others!!

As one of our graduates, Lois Macon, eloquently proclaimed, There was a place called FAIRFIELD INDUSTRIAL HIGH SCHOOL and a man named EDMOND JEFFERSON OLIVER and his vision was to educate the coloreds living in a colored community, children of colored parents who worked at colored jobs to send their colored children to a colored school.

The visionary, Professor Oliver with head bloody, but unbowed still forged ahead. Each drop of blood in the sand, like living water produced living fruit, sprouting all around is evidence of his passion. He calls to the visionaries and awaits that army to understand that each child of mother F.I.H.S. also has a purpose; that each is, and that is will be is when he or she is!

We, the graduates of Fairfield Industrial High School, are the fruits of his labor and some of our stories are unfolded in this book.

Like a plant, Professor Olivers roots are showing. He grew good people in our small town with honesty, sincerity and dignity!


Drop this book on the floor and where ever it opens, it will be excellent reading! This true story is dedicated to our BLACK Community (I choose to capitalize the word (BLACK), because of all the hell we caught and are still catching in this country)!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483642444

John B. Davis

John B. Davis was a classroom teacher, central, district and local school administrator for thirty years with the Chicago Public Schools from 1958 – 1988. He served as a visiting professor and part-time instructor at Roosevelt University, Chicago, in the Administration and Supervision Masters Program from 1971–1990. He was also an instructor with the International Renewable Institute and Saint Xavier University Field-Based Masters Program from 1991-2007. His education includes Fairfield Industrial High School, Fairfield, Alabama, 1951; BA in Physical Education, Miles College, Fairfield, Alabama, 1955; M.A. Education Administration and Supervision, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, 1967. JOHN B. DAVIS Mr. Davis has been a human resource development consultant, and director since 1969. He has been an administrator and teacher in the Chicago Public Schools for 30 years. EDUCATION AND TRAINING Mr. Davis is currently completing requirements for a Ph.D. in Education Administration at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He received a M.Ed in Adminstration and Supervision at DePaul University and a B.A. in Physical Education at Miles College. He has also completed professional training with Chicago State University, National Training Laboratories (N.T.L.), University Associates, and Cooperative Education Research Laboratories, Inc., (CERLI), in organization development, group dynamics team building, program design, race relations, human relations, and counseling and guidance. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Mr. Davis has taught at every grade level from elementary through graduate school. He has had management experience and human resource responsibilities. Some of his responsibilities have been as President of the Chicago-based Organizational Training Consultants, Inc., Co-Director of Midwest Center Satellite Program for the Chicago Public Schools, Staff Assistant and Coordinator of Human Relations for the Chicago Public Schools, Visiting Professor and Instructor at Roosevelt University and St. Xavier University. Mr. Davis has done consultant work for the United States Department of Labor, Archdiocese of Chicago School System, Oklahoma City School System, New York City School System, St. Louis School System, San Francisco School System, Allstate Insurance Company, Chicago Department of Aviation, Model Cities, Milwaukee Public School System, National Conference of Christians and Jews, Education Leadership Institute, Teacher Corp., Managing Change, Urban Gateways, Martin, Boone Associates, Action, Harbridge House, and Illinois Renewal Institute. Mr. Davis has professional affiliations with the American Society for Training and Development, National Council of Staff Development, National O.D. Network, and Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

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Copyright © 2013 by John B. Davis.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013908990

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4836-4243-7

              Softcover    978-1-4836-4242-0

              Ebook        978-1-4836-4244-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

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without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 06/14/2013

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118942

CONTENTS

Chapter 1   Introduction

Professor Edmond Jefferson Oliver, The Man

The Case for Inculcating Black History into the Curricula of All of Our Schools.

Why this book?

Chapter 2   The History of the City of Fairfield and Fairfield Industrial High School

Professor Oliver’s Perspective

Orientation for New Pupils

Attendance and Other Administrative and Organizational Actions

Teachers and Community Support

Fad and Fallacies—Shams and Shibboleths

The School Assembly and a speech by Mary McCloud Bethune

Chapter 3   Music

Chapter 4   Other Organizational Procedures

Organization of Curriculum and Cocurricular Programs

Professor Oliver’s aphorisms

Chapter 5   Fairfield Industrial High School’s Hall of Fame

Chapter 6   Fairfield Industrial High School Alumni Association

Chapter 7   Fairfield Industrial High School Junior-Senior Picnic

Chapter 8   Encapsulated History of the Class of 1954

Chapter 9   Fairfield Industrial High School Folklore, Hi-Lo Jinks, and Adventures

Playing the Dozens and Jonning

Chapter 10   Desegregation and the Demise of Our Beloved Fairfield Industrial High School

Chapter 11   Our Military Veterans

Chapter 12   Athletics

Football

Baseball

Willie Howard Mays Jr.

Basketball

Chapter 13   Graduation Classes Pictures 1931-1968

Chapter 14   Memoriams

Chapter 15   Program Evaluation Review Technique (PERT) Chart

Chapter 16   Hit Parade Songs and Headline Events from 1924 to 1968

Chapter 17   About the Author

The Author’s Biography

Chapter 18   References

DEDICATION

Without the help of the following people, this book would not be possible. I dedicate this book to them.

To my wife, Tina M. Davis, for her patience, understanding, and wisdom.

To my daughters, Jonneida, Karla, Charlayne, and my sons, Darryl, John Jr. and Anthony, for their critiques of my book.

To Joe and Linda Jennings for their technical expertise and development of artifacts.

To Mr. and Mrs. Andre Witt, who initiated the idea of producing a documentary featuring Professor Oliver and Fairfield Industrial High School. The documentary did not come to fruition, but it did encourage me to write this book.

To Professor Oliver for writing the first book featuring Fairfield Industrial High School entitled The End of an Era, Fairfield Industrial High School 1924-1968, Fairfield, Alabama.

To Ms. Gilda Seay, for her typing and technical expertise.

PREFACE

About the Author

The Fruits of His Labor: This is the reason for writing this book!

The true story of Professor Edmond Jefferson Oliver, principal of Fairfield Industrial High School, it’s staff, students, and community, the state of Alabama, the nation, and the world.

John B. Davis, Class of 1951

Fruit results from planted seeds; when seeds grow, they bear fruit (Galatians 5:22, 23). We were taught that the fruit that you have to reach for is the sweetest.

The fruits of his labor are many: the world is blessed with Fairfield Industrial High School (FIHS) graduates eschewing their accomplishments through serving others.

As one of our graduates, Lois Macon eloquently proclaimed, "There was a place called Fairfield Industrial High School and a man named Edmond Jefferson Oliver, and his vision was to educate the coloreds living in a colored community, children of colored parents who worked at colored jobs to send their colored children to a colored school.

The visionary, Professor Oliver, with head bloody but unbowed, still forged ahead. Each drop of blood in the sand, like living water, produced living fruit, sprouting all around is evidence of his passion. He calls to the visionaries and awaits that army to understand that each child of mother FIHS also has a purpose; that each is, and that is will be is when he or she is!"

We, the graduates of Fairfield Industrial High School, are the fruits of his labor; and some of our stories are unfolded in this book.

Like a plant, Professor Oliver’s roots are showing. He grew good people in our small town with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.

Drop this book on the floor, and wherever it opens, it will be excellent reading. This true story is dedicated to our BLACK community (I choose to capitalize the word black because of all the hell we caught and are still catching in this country).

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

There was a woman who was born in 1915. The place she resided was in the North Central portion of Alabama in the county of Jefferson, one and five-eighth square miles in area and lies nine miles southwest of downtown Birmingham, directly adjacent to the Birmingham city limits at Vinesville and Ensley. The community is hilly and contains mountains and valleys.

She had six husbands, four sisters, and 3,162 educated children whom she taught to celebrate their blackness. Her husbands were W. M. Shelden, L. H. Whitefield, W. C. Pressley, Marcus Craig, Edmond Jefferson Oliver, and James McWilliams; and her sisters were Clara Brittain, Esther Robinson, Mary Payne, and Wilhemina Vaughn.

In 1927, her name was Interurban Heights High School (IHHS) and was changed to Fairfield Industrial High School (FIHS) in 1940. The family songs were Get On Board and I Need Thee Every Hour.

She, her husbands, and her sisters believed in biblical admonitions, which were as follows: Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him (Proverbs 22:5); Withhold not correction from the child, for if thou beatest him with the rod, he should not die (Proverbs 23:13); and Thou should beat him with the rod and shall deliver his soul from hell (Proverbs 23:14).

In June 1968, she made her transition.

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Dr. Edmond Jefferson Oliver, Principal,

Fairfield Industrial High School, 1924-1968

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Mrs. E. J. Oliver

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Bust of Professor E. J. Oliver

PROFESSOR EDMOND JEFFERSON OLIVER,

THE MAN

A legend

Edmond Jefferson Oliver

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1924-1968

Forty-three years of professional, dedicated selfless service to the Fairfield Community

Edmond Jefferson Oliver, born in Wilcox County, Prairie, Alabama, son of Henry Jefferson and Mary Alice Oliver, both of whom were in the field of education, serving as principals in Jefferson County for twenty-seven and thirty-eight years, respectively.

Educational Background

Industrial High School, Birmingham, Alabama; Tuskegee Institute, Postgraduate and Smith Hughes Graduate in the Department of Agriculture; Alabama State College, Junior College Graduate, MEd; Miles College, AB degree; Ohio State University, additional study.

Professional Organization Affiliations

National Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; National Education Association; American Teachers Association (life membership); National Association of Secondary School Principals; Alabama State Teachers Association; Fairfield Teachers Association; Alabama Leadership Study Council.

Lodges and Fraternity

Mason; Shriner; Past Basileus, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Man of the Year.

Church Affiliations

Metropolitan Community—Trustee.

Honorary Positions Held

Treasurer of ASTA; Member of ASTA Executive Committee-At-Large; Directed successful Red Cross Drive, 1948; Directed successful United Negro College Fund Drive; Vice President of ASTA 1960-1962; President of Alabama State Teachers Association 1962-1964.

Positions and Honors

He served three years as principal of Jasper city schools, Alabama, and taught one year and two summers at Alabama State College. He has served for forty-two years as principal of Fairfield Industrial High School. The high school athletic field was named Oliver Field in his honor in November 1955 by the Fairfield Board of Education, and he was presented a plaque attesting to his ability, high sense of values, sterling character, and leadership. He was honored for thirty years of service by the people of Fairfield in February 1956. He was honored by the citizens in May 1960 for thirty-six years of dedicated service to the children, parents, and citizens of Fairfield. While serving as president of the Alabama State Teachers Association, he attended several committee meetings in Washington at the invitation of the National Education Association. He was a participating contributor involving the Commission of Professional Standards and the Committee on Professional Ethics. He presided over the circle at the National Education Association Annual Convention in Detroit, Michigan, in June 1963. He attended the World Conference of Organizations in the Teaching Profession Conference in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on August 7-13, 1963, as a delegate from the National Education Association of the United States and the American Teachers Association. He was the only person so designated from the state of Alabama to attend the World Confederation. He was a contributing member at the legislative workshop on Education Bills, Washington DC, on November 9, 1963. He presided over a session on November 18 in Miami Beach during a workshop for Southeastern States on Instruction sponsored by the National Education Association. He was a designated participant contributor at the NASSP Annual Convention in Chicago in February 1964. He listed in Who’s Who in American Education in 1963-1964. He is presently a member of the trustee board of the American Teachers Association.

image015.jpgimage017.jpgimage019.jpgimage021.jpgimage023.jpgimage025.jpg

Boulevard named for Professor Oliver

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Professor E. J. Oliver interred with some of his relatives

at Shadow Lawn Memorial Gardens Cemetery.

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B. B. Baker

Superintendent of Fairfield City Schools

1923-1946

"Si monumentum requiris, circumspice

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Mr. G. Virgil Nunn

Holds BS and MS degrees;

superintendent of Fairfield schools for twenty-five years.

Since May 1970, he has been superintendent

of Homewood City Schools

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Vocational Building

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Where We Ended Erected 1940

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1st Negro School Building in The Interurban Heights community

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Englewood School

Clara E. Brittain Principal

image041.jpg

Sixty-First Street School

Esther E. Robinson Principal

THE CASE FOR INCULCATING BLACK HISTORY INTO THE CURRICULA OF ALL OF OUR SCHOOLS.

Professor Oliver and the staff of Fairfield Industrial High School understood how the development of character prepared us to respond heroically to extraordinary circumstances, which opened other possibilities for making meaning of life and living. We realized that our character was our destiny. We needed to run as fast as we could to stay where we were.

We were free to invent ourselves, to belong in a family and a society in which destiny was made by ourselves. We refused to be in box-replicating lives lived before. Not that working in steel mills, Coke yards, wire mills, refractories (brickyards), and mines; working as maids in white folks’ kitchens, washing and ironing their clothes, and washing their floors; or working as restaurant dishwashers and other menial jobs is immoral—it was an avenue of existence.

They were poor and uneducated. These events unfolded during de facto and de jure segregation.

This population had one overriding, tenacious dream: to ensure the education of their sons and daughters so that they would not have to live as they did and to pursue vocations and jobs, not our grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors, or friends, but to attend and to graduate from college.

Trickle down didn’t work for our black schools; it was more like an occasional drip drop. We had to make do with hand-me-down football equipment (shoulder and hip pads, etc.) from white folks. We also had some hand-me-down books.

Because of the high expectations from our parents, extended family, Professor Oliver, teachers, and community, we saw ourselves as men and women and not as colored men and women. We celebrated our blackness.

The following adjectives describe Professor E. J. Oliver: honorable, steadfast, determined, stoic, tolerant, courageous, forgiving, altruistic, wise, loyal, taciturn, disciplined, idealistic, introspective, charismatic, and handsome.

We were the only black high school in Alabama, and probably America, that had Black History inculcated in the curricula year-round and not just Negro History Week and later Negro History Month as organized by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. And of course, it is celebrated in February, the shortest month of the year.

Professor E. J. Oliver explained the introduction of Negro History in the curricula of Fairfield Industrial High School and the present emphasis on black studies in various colleges and universities:

"Having had a background in pride and self-esteem from my parents, when I entered Tuskegee Institute, I found the adjustment to college life very easy because anyone attending Tuskegee Institute at this time would be thoroughly inculcated with those values essential to the whole, the development of the individual to the end, that he could make a positive, wholesome contribution to himself and society in spite of (many times) organized opposition. With the permission of the superintendent and the board of education, I was permitted to include the study of Negro History in our curriculum in September 1928. It was a required subject. Students were given one unit for successfully completing the course. If a race of people cannot look back and see something worthwhile in their past, they are not properly challenged to move forward to a worthwhile future. Thus, our first high school graduates (class of 1930) had a thorough knowledge of their glorious past. Not only did our library contain the textbook that we were using, but we also had access to a majority of the publications about the Negro and his contributions to the building of America and also, the contributions he had made throughout the world. The Journal of Negro History and the Negro History bulletins kept us abreast of the contemporary history. It also became a positive motivation for creativeness and courage. The author of the text was Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a PhD from Harvard University. He was also cofounder (1915) of the association for the study of Negro History. The title of the text was ‘The Negro in Our History.’

Races of men cannot appreciate each other unless they know about each other’s past and current accomplishments. All Negro pupils were required to study American History and the History of Alabama. However, I believe, the best way to prevent a race of people from going forward is to deny them a knowledge of their glorious past. Today, with thousands of dollars being invested on the various campuses in black history centers, the true worthy objectives would not be accomplished unless the courses are required, in all schools for all students, just as Negroes were required to study the American and state histories.

I don’t know, but I guess the authors know why the Negroes’ contributions were left out of the American, state, and world histories that all pupils were required to study. However, I do know of the debilitating effect it has had on the Negro race. By being denied the opportunity to benefit from this motivational history, the world and particularly the United States have been the losers because no one race has a monopoly on the brain power. In a democracy, either we prepare all of our citizens to become self-sufficient, or else they become our responsibilities. The basic needs of our citizens must and will be met, one way or another. The other races (pupil and adults) were also cheated because they held the Negroes in low esteem because they knew nothing of the Negroes’ worthwhile contributions to our glorious country. They did know the cook, the butler, the yard man, and the tenant farmer. They also knew that we had been slaves under their foreparents, and because of this lack of knowledge, many thought we should be kept (in our place).

It has not been too long ago (and in some instances even now) to speak out in behalf of a human brother (Negro) meant ostracism and/or maybe political defeat and even death. These attitudes have been visible, even though we take pride in our Christian heritage. One of the worst honest mistakes (and I say honest because I believe those responsible thought they were doing right) was to teach the majority (whites) that Negroes had no rights they were bound to respect, thus delaying the development of the most important of the country’s potential, the