John Davis Consulting

Fifty-Year Search for First Black Cast to Compete in the Mississippi High School Drama Festival

February 16, 2023

Marion Central Dramatics Club 1969

In honor of Black History Month, I would like to depart from my political commentary and tell you a personal story about my experiences while teaching sixth grade English from 1968 to 1970 at an all-Black school prior to integration in Marion County, Mississippi. The rural county school, named Marion Central, had a high school wing and an elementary school wing separated by an enclosed walkway.

One day, the Marion Central High School Dramatics Club teacher came to my elementary school classroom and asked me to help with the school play. She had found out that in addition to English, I majored in theater at William Carey College in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

I went to see my principal, Mr. Odell James, to ask permission to work with the high school drama group. After several days, Mr. James informed me that he had worked out a schedule that freed me up three days a week for one hour each day to work with the cast of five 15-year-old high school sophomores on a one-act play called The Clod.

After six weeks of rehearsing the 20-minute play three days a week, building set pieces like a stairway with a banister handrail, perfecting makeup for age, and collecting props like a potbelly stove, an oil lantern, and a pistol, we finally presented the play to the student body. They loved it.

I was so impressed with the quality of the acting by the cast and their commitment to getting everything right, that I decided to try to enter the play in the Mississippi High School Drama Festival. The drama festival was a statewide competition of one-act plays that began with eight regional contests. The eight regional winners competed in the finals for statewide drama awards.

Unfortunately, in 1969 Mississippi public schools were still completely segregated. Black schools did not compete in the Mississippi High School Drama Festival. Black and White sports teams did not compete against one other. Teachers at White schools were members of the Mississippi Education Association. Teachers at Black schools were members of the Mississippi Teachers Association.

Nothing to do with public schools was integrated in 1969 in Mississippi. Those were still the days of White Only and Colored Only water fountains and bathrooms in public places like the Marion County Courthouse. Nonetheless, I got permission from the high school principal, Mr. Rosevelt Otis, to send the application to the regional competition along with the $25 entry fee.

Our application was accepted. We did not know if the contest officials knew Marion Central was a Black school, or whether we would be allowed to compete when they found out. What we did know is that we had a competitive one-act play, and we were going to show up at the regional competition.

Not only did Marion Central dare to show up on the day of the regional competition, but Marion Central, the only Black school competing, defeated 14 white schools in winning First-Place Best Actress, First Place Best Actor, and First-Place Best Play.

Winning the regional competition qualified Marion Central to compete in the Mississippi High School Drama Festival Finals at Mississippi State University in Starkville, Mississippi, located 200 miles away in Northeast Mississippi. The only hotel that allowed Blacks at that time was the Holiday Inn, which is where we stayed. It was such a broadening experience for the students.

None of the kids had ever been that far away from home. None had ever stayed in a hotel or ordered dinner from a menu in a restaurant where they were served by a White waitress.

The next morning, we sat in the back of the university auditorium and watched the first four of the eight regional winners present their plays. After lunch, it was our turn. Contestants were allowed 10 minutes to set up their set pieces and 20-minutes for the play. With curtains closed, we wheeled out the cast-iron potbelly stove and the stairs with the banister rails. The lantern was lit. The curtains opened.

The other schools didn’t know what to expect. The White students had never seen a cast of Black students perform a play. I knew what to expect. We had worked nearly three months perfecting the acting, timing, makeup and staging. I held my breath for 20 minutes. The performance was flawless.

When the awards ceremony was held late that afternoon, Marion Central won First Place Best Actress, Second Place Best Actor and Third Place Best Play. We drove 200 miles back to our rural, South Mississippi county with three of the seven awards presented at the 1969 Mississippi High School Drama Festival Finals. We were so excited. So proud to be from Marion Central.

And now, for the rest of the story

In January 1970, Mississippi schools were required by court order to integrate. No more delays. It had been fifteen years since the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. Mississippi had spent the entire time fighting integration and no time planning for the inevitable. Now they had to integrate. Right then. No more litigation.

During the Christmas holidays, the county superintendent notified all of the teachers and administrators that we were to attend a meeting in the White school gymnasium to find out where we would be teaching now that we had to integrate.

When I arrived, all the teachers from the White school were sitting on the gym bleachers together at a distance from the Marion Central teachers. The superintendent and the four county principals were standing behind a table on the gym floor with a cardboard box on top of the table.

The superintendent began by introducing the four principals. He introduced the White principals as Mr. and Mr., and then introduced the two Black principals as Roosevelt and Odell. I was shocked that he would insult our principals in front of everyone in such a disrespectful way. But then I could tell by the way he carried on, that he had no idea that what he did was insulting to Mr. Roosevelt Otis and Mr. Odell James. His introduction of White and Black principals was customary at that time in the Old South states that had been aligned during the American Civil War of 1861-1865.

After the introduction of the principals, the superintendent began the meeting by saying that they had not made any plans for integration, and that in order to be fair, each principal would take turns drawing names of teachers out of the cardboard box until all names were drawn. He said that we would go with our principal to that school from January through May until they could sort things out in the summer and get better organized for the fall of 1970.

The principal who drew my name was Mr. Mabrey, a tall, lanky principal with a weathered face and raspy voice. Mr. Mabrey was principal of Bunker Hill, an all-White, first through eighth grade school in a white wooden building located on the White side of the county.

The first day the newly assigned Bunker Hill teachers met with Mr. Mabrey, he informed us that no plans had been made for integration, and that in order to be fair, each teacher, in order of seniority, would take turns writing their initials on the blackboard out by the names of the classes they wanted to teach. He started with teachers who had taught over 25 years, then 20 to 25 years, and so on.

As I had only been teaching since 1968, I had to take what was left on the blackboard. My teaching assignment from January 1970 through May 1970 was the following: 8th Grade American History, 7th Grade Science, 8th Grade Girls PE, 6th Grade Boys PE, and two Study Halls.

Over the next few years, students and teachers were scattered by integration and eventually many of us lost touch. I got into political work through the Marion County DA, Maurice Dantin, who ran for governor in 1975. Eventually, I developed a professional interest in political analysis, which took me to over half the states in the country and almost four decades of living in North Carolina.

I had forgotten their names

As the years went by, ten years, twenty years, forty years, I forgot the names of the five sophomore students I directed in the one-act play, The Clod; that all-Black cast of high school students to who won three of the seven awards at the Mississippi High School Drama Festival Finals in 1969.

However, as poet Maya Angelou said, you never forget how people made you feel. Those five sophomore students, along with my sixth grade English students and the rest of the faculty and administrators, have always made me feel so proud to say that I was from Marion Central.

In 2019, the year of the 50th anniversary of the Mississippi High School Drama Festival of 1969, I started thinking about those five cast members every day. I wanted to catch up with them. To see how their lives turned out. I tried to no avail to remember their names. It had simply been too long.

Then one day, I remembered that The Columbian-Progress, the newspaper in Columbia, the county seat, had written a story about the Marion Central Dramatics Club winning top honors in the state drama festival. I went online and found a website that for $5 would give me access to a list of all the newspapers that had Internet-based searchable archives. I paid the $5 with my credit card and held my breath as I scanned the list for The Columbian-Progress. I was so excited to see that it was on the list; that it had a searchable archives dating back to 1955.

I clicked on the link to The Columbian-Progress archives and typed in the search box, “Marion Central Dramatics Club state champions.” I pressed enter. I wanted so badly to read the story, to see if I remembered everything correctly. To see the names. Then, there it was. The Columbian-Progress, Thursday, March 27, 1969. The headline read, “Marion Central Dramatic Club Takes Three of Seven Awards.” There they were, the long forgotten names of the cast. “The cast includes Etta Watts, who won the coveted Best Actress Award, E.J. Youngblood, winner of the Second Best Actor Award; Odell James, Jr., Sammy Whalum, and Willie Parker.” Now I had their names!

I decided to start by tracking down Etta Watts, thinking that the guys would have been more likely to leave the county in pursuit of jobs or the military. I went to the White Pages website and typed in, “Etta Watts, Columbia, Mississippi.” When I hit enter, about a dozen names came up. Lots of names with the last name Watts, but none with the name Etta. Then I noticed that for an extra nine dollars you can get cell phone numbers. I decided that I would get the cell phone numbers and send text messages with hopes someone would reply who could help me track down Etta.

I’m not sure why I chose the name I chose for the first text message. Her name was not Etta, and her last name was not Watts. But I sent a text message to that person that read, “My name is John Davis. I directed Etta Watts in a play at Marion Central in 1969. Just wanted to catch up. Are you Etta Watts?”

I waited. Five minutes; 10 minutes. A half-hour. An hour. Just as I was about to give up and try a different name, I received a reply to my text message. The reply read, “I am her daughter. Here is her phone number. She’s anxious to talk with you.”

I called Etta right away. The last time I had talked to her she was 15 years old. Now she was 67 years old. I’m sure we talked for at least a half hour before ending with her agreeing to help me track down the four guys in the cast. That led to equally wonderful phone calls reminiscing with three of the other four cast members. Willie Parker, who had been a professional truck driver, had passed.

I sent everyone copies of the news stories about the play in The Columbian-Progress. I was able to find copies of The Clod on Amazon and sent it to everyone. Over the next two years, we stayed in touch by text. We wished each other happy holidays. Easter, Christmas, New Year’s Eve. We sent texts of concern if the national news carried a story about a storm where we lived.

The Reunion

Last fall, Etta called me and asked me if I would come to the 50th High School Class Reunion for her class; to say a few words. She wanted me to tour the old school, now called East Marion, with her and Odell James, Jr., the only other member of the cast who would be there. She said that another cast member, E.J. Youngblood, had died, and that Samuel Whalen was not well enough to attend.

And so, I packed my suitcase and drove 813 miles to Columbia, Mississippi for one reason and one reason only, to tell the Marion Central graduates how blessed they were to have Marion Central as the foundation for their lives, and how proud I have always been to say that I was from Marion Central.

On Saturday morning, the day of the banquet, Etta, Odell and I toured the school. The stage in the gymnasium was exactly as it was over 50 years ago in 1969 when I worked with them as high school sophomores on the school play.

Then, I instinctively turned and looked up to the top of the bleachers in the gym, remembering exactly where I sat with my sixth grade students when the entire community came to the school on the first anniversary of the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to honor Dr. King.

Some moments you never forget where you were.

I spent the rest of the day with Etta, her husband and family at their country home. The garden. The chickens. The flowers. A lifetime of memories in pictures on the walls. The Marion Central yearbook.

That night, I spoke at the banquet and reminisced with students about life at Marion Central and the early days, months and years after integration. The sons of Mr. Otis and Mr. James were there.

The next morning, a group of us went to church at Shorts Chapel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, to worship together and hear Pastor Rev. Johnny Porter, a member of the 50^th reunion class. She did an amazing job of inspiring us all to be our better selves.

After church, we said our goodbyes and I began my two-day drive back to Raleigh.

Maya Angelou, the world-renown African American writer who taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem for more than 30 years, said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I have always felt so proud to be from Marion Central.

END

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John N. Davis