Carrie Williams' Courageous Fight for Equal Rights in the Early Jim Crow Era
by Kathleen Jackson Costantini
Carrie Williams, the African American teacher at the
Coketon Colored School in Tucker County, West Virginia, in the 1890s, bravely
confronted an attempt to rob black children of their educational rights. In the
burgeoning Jim Crow era that legally sanctioned black second-class citizenship,
Carrie courageously challenged the all white Tucker County Board of Education
when it shortened the school term for African American children. Her
battlefield was a courtroom and her champion was John Robert Clifford, the
first African American lawyer admitted to the bar in West Virginia.
Until
recently, the national importance of this landmark litigation has remained obscured,
largely due to the earlier U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson.
Carrie Williams’ victory provided a steady ray of hope from atop the Allegheny
Mountains during the long fight for equal rights for African Americans. This is
Carrie’s story, a true American heroic narrative.
About the Author:
Kathleen
Jackson Costantini has over twenty-five years experience as a teacher,
administrator and academic advisor in diverse urban school settings. Throughout
her career, she has developed and taught Advanced Placement courses in United
States History and American Government and Politics. A specialist in the study
of primary source documents, she was the director of a Gilder Lehreman
Institute of American History enrichment program for high school students.
Kathleen later founded the American Studies Writing Workshop, a tuition free
document based writing program for low income students in New York.
Kathleen
is a guest lecturer at Manhattan College where she has taught graduate classes
in Professional Writing and Counseling the College Applicant. She is the
co-author of Counseling 21st Century
Students for Optimal College and Career Readiness(Routledge Press).
Currently, Kathleen is an educational counselor and consultant assisting
students with various educational needs, including learning differences,
organizational issues and developmental writing skills. Most importantly, she
is a writer avidly exploring topics in American history.
Kathleen earned her B.A. in English Literature at the
University of Detroit and her M. A. in English Literature at Fordham
University. She lives in New York and is frequently in the Mountain State.