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Abstract

Graduates of Roosevelt High School remember their experiences, specifically the principals. Bernard Watson introduces the other authors’ personal reflections by describing the environment, his relationships with the principals and his fellow students, and the long-term effects of the school on its graduates. Following this introduction, Randall C. Morgan remembers his grandfather, H. Theo Tatum, who everyone knew and respected and who crafted a sense of excellence in the students. The other two principals—Warren Anderson and Robert Eugene Jones—are remembered by their children. Rosemary Davis remembers her father, Anderson, as being energized by teaching, learning, and interacting with teachers and students. He believed in producing well-rounded students, those with both physical as well as intellectual skills. Byron Jones remembers his father, Robert Jones, as also having a passion for teaching and leading. He honored students’ achievements and increased the number who graduated with honors. These personal memories support the importance of leadership within an elite African-American school’s culture.

Keywords

principals culture African-American high schools segregation gifted and advanced students Roosevelt High School

Three principals played a leading role in creating and maintaining its pursuit of excellence and success for all students.”

Introduction

Bernard Watson

Class of 1946

It demanded your attention: a meticulous maintained lawn covering half a city block in a neighborhood of small family homes and rental apartments, small businesses on the main east west street on the south side of Gary, where most African-Americans were forced to live. This was the front lawn of Roosevelt High School. The buildings were crowded; with classrooms, cafeteria, gyms, and halls clean and meticulously maintained; and with the second largest auditorium in the city, two libraries, an indoor swimming pool, and spaces for bands and orchestra. It was the pride of the African-American community and demanded and received overwhelming and sustained support. Something important and necessary was going on in those buildings. A part of the segregated public school system, the principals, teachers, secretaries, coaches, custodians, librarians, and other staff were all Black and provided education from K-12.

I attended and graduated from that school in 1946, confident, eager, and prepared to compete and succeed in anything I chose to pursue. I was only one of the thousands of others who were fortunate enough to attend Roosevelt. Three principals played a leading role in creating and maintaining its pursuit of excellence and success for all students. They sought, hired, supported, and respected a faculty with degrees from some of the best colleges and universities in the country including such HBCUS as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, Fisk, Hampton, and Lincoln among them. Most earned or pursued graduate degrees from state and private institutions throughout the country. H. Theo Tatum and Warren Anderson spent most of their lives leading Roosevelt. They were principals when I was a student and later as a teacher, assistant principal, and junior high school principal. Robert Jones, who was also principal, succeeded them. I knew and respected Jones and urged him to pursue the position. They all shared the same educational approach and values. They respected and supported colleagues, and respected, encouraged, and challenged students. Students were made an integral part of their education, behavior, activities, and respect for their peers and the school.

Graduates of Roosevelt became physicians, surgeons, lawyers, educators, enlisted and officers in the armed forces. At least three were pilots and Tuskegee Airmen. One became a General. Others became elected officials at the local, state, and national level. Roosevelt was one of a number of effective and successful schools serving African-American youth during a period of segregation and unequal support for Blacks. They continued to operate under these conditions long after segregated schools were no longer legal. Without these schools, one can only speculate where we would be today.

In my own case, I can assure you that Roosevelt prepared me to confidently pursue, compete, and succeed in many locations and areas despite obstacles, roadblocks, and subtle impediments. It prepared many, including those who for reasons beyond their control were denied what others achieved. It did, however, enable them to prepare and encourage their children and grandchildren.

H. Theo Tatum (1933-1961)

Randall C. Morgan Jr., MD, MBA

Class of 1961, Co-Valedictorian

Mr. H. Theo. Tatum and Gary Roosevelt High School are forever connected in the minds and hearts of many of us who grew up in Gary, Indiana, during the period from 1948 to 1961. For many of my contemporaries, Mr. Tatum was a person whom everyone knew, respected, feared, and often did not understand. For me, I learned my first day of school at the Roosevelt School kindergarten location, that my grandfather was no longer “Dee Dee” as named by me as an infant, but was “Mr. Tatum,” the important person that everyone at my school knew, even when they were five years old! This was in part because their parents had been students at Roosevelt High School and had been mentored and molded by this person of small stature, but superior intelligence, who understood the importance of school and community. Though we were living in a de facto-segregated community, our school, including the principals and the faculty, created the place where we all were comfortable and respected.

The irony is that I was often not popular with all my schoolmates because I was the principal’s grandson. However, the personal interest shown to me by Mr. Tatum, when we were at home or in the community, made it comfortable for me to not always be popular. We shared a love of reading, history, music, and sports. I often accompanied him during his halftime visits to the locker room of our great basketball team to hear his words of encouragement for the players. I always thought our visits were important to the success of the team.

Then and now, I am inspired by my grandfather, the devoted leader of the school that everyone in the Gary community wanted to attend. The halo effect, that benefitted so many graduates of Roosevelt High School, was created in part through the partnership and mutual respect between the Principal, Mr. Tatum, and the Assistant Principal, Mr. Warren Anderson, that lasted almost 30 years!

So many of us who grew up in Gary, Indiana, carried a sense of pride and confidence throughout our lives because we attended Roosevelt High School. At no time was that pride greater than when we marched with our caps and gowns at Memorial Auditorium in Gary and received our diplomas directly from Mr. Tatum, and hearing from his lips the word, “congratulations.” That was of greatest impact to me because I was in his last graduating class in June of 1961. We graduated together, he to retirement and me to a life of education, challenges, accomplishments, disappointments, but never a loss of self-confidence. Clearly this is because I have daily reflections of Mr. H. Theo. Tatum to most and Granddad to me, as the person who crafted the excellence of Roosevelt School and nurtured the environment that would not let us fail.

I will end with Mr. Tatum’s last “Principal’s Letter” to the graduating class of 1961:

My dear Seniors:

It is with genuine pleasure that I greet your class, the largest of the thirty-one classes that have graduated from Roosevelt High School. This accomplishment is particularly gratifying because present-day society now, more than ever, is markedly dependent on youth. You can succeed where former generations have failed, but thorough preparation must be your watch word.

You go forth with the challenge of a new world before you. The steady tramp of millions of people moving aimlessly throughout a disturbed world re-echoes the need for plan and purpose in your life. No life can succeed without these guideposts. No values can be obtained except through their realization.

You owe to society the responsibility of achieving a high standard of useful citizenship. You must fulfill that obligation. Meet the new world with an eager yearning for knowledge and a profound desire for service. Pursue these objectives with relentless effort, for out of them will come plan, purpose, and values that will make your life complete and worthy. May you achieve a career of integrity and service, and may the world be better because you have lived in it.

Sincerely yours,

H. Theo Tatum

Warren Anderson (1961-1970)

Rosemary Anderson Davis, MA

Class of 1956

My friends are surprised when I tell them that I attended the same school, Gary Roosevelt, for 13 years—1943–1956. Those years helped me to form my identity, fashion my dreams, and begin to understand my place in the world. Observing my father close up as assistant principal of Roosevelt during those years had a profound impact on my development.

When Warren Anderson gave speeches or presentations, he often centered his remarks upon the importance of “building character” in youth. He used the metaphor of the “three legged stool”—the home, the church, and the school—as the building blocks for students to become well-rounded, educated, productive members of society. Parents and families as partners in education were key elements to success. Like Mr. Tatum and Mr. Jones, he saw several generations of families move through Roosevelt. He taught the parents of many of my friends.

As the principal of Roosevelt in 1963, his letter to the graduating seniors in the school yearbook, The Rooseveltian, captured his philosophy and his hopes for the students:

My dear Seniors,

For you these are days of heightened anticipation and cherished fulfillment now that you are approaching graduation and departure from Roosevelt. I rejoice in your achievement and commend you for reaching this important objective in your lives.

Unfortunately, the world that faces you is one of great uncertainty and continued anxiety. Despite this you must elect to live as well and usefully as possible, not abandoning yourselves to these large perplexities, but using those innate capacities that are yours.

Yours is the capacity to feel and to be moved by your feelings in deeds and accomplishments that normally seem beyond your power. Do not lose it. Yours is the capacity to think, to question, and not to accept blindly. Stretch, expand, and develop this power through intensive care and forced cultivation if need be. And how about your spirit? Yours is the capacity to wonder and to be concerned about yourselves and your relationships with others.

I urge you to develop these capacities to their fullest. Set for yourselves now and throughout life worthy goals and always be faithful to them.

Sincerely yours,

Warren M. Anderson (April 5, 1963)—(reprinted from Drakeford, 2010)

He was a “wordsmith” who enjoyed teaching, learning, and interacting with teachers and students. Being around students energized him. Even as a reserved and thoughtful person, he was nicknamed, “The Hawk”—sees all, hears all, knows all. As early as elementary school, I was called “Little Hawk.” He preached being well grounded in the subject matter and making strong connections between theory and practice. How to create an environment of enthusiasm, expectancy, and the excitement of discovery in a classroom was difficult in an under-resourced and overcrowded K-12 school in the 1940 s and early 1950 s. I remember driving with him in the summers through the streets of the segregated Central District where Roosevelt was located and where we lived as he counted roughly the growing number of children playing in the streets as new housing was being built. The Black population of Gary was increasing rapidly. Then he would come home and go back to the dining room table to continue to work late into the night scheduling and placing over 3000 children in classrooms. This was with pages of lists, a spreadsheet, and an adding machine—no computers in those days.

The goal was to produce well-rounded students. He subscribed to Mr. Tatum’s dictum about the importance of developing physical as well as intellectual skills. As a native of Indiana, a product of Indiana public education through undergraduate school, and a former athlete, he was an avid booster of all of Roosevelt’s sports. He never missed a football or basketball game. As a teacher in the 1930 s during the height of segregation, he accompanied the basketball team to Negro high school tournaments in the South. When Roosevelt went to the state basketball finals in 1955 and then won the state championship in 1968 during his tenure as principal, he was overjoyed.

Roosevelt School was his second home. Monday and Wednesday nights he supervised night school. He completed paperwork in his office across the hall from the auditorium during pep rallies and Friday night talent shows. During the late 1960 s the Jackson 5 performed at a Roosevelt talent show before a capacity crowd of screaming teenagers. The older Jackson brothers were Roosevelt students and the family lived about 2 blocks from the school. After the concert my father called to tell me, “You are going to hear more about this group.”

Segregation had its price. In 1968 I was working as an educator in Minnesota. Dr. Spencer Myers, the superintendent of the Edina, Minnesota public schools at that time had been an elementary school principal in Gary earlier in his career. He told me that Tatum and Anderson were the deans of the principals in Gary. “They taught the rest of us so much.” Because of segregation they could not be promoted to higher administrative positions. On the plus side during these years of segregation, the faculty and administrators at Roosevelt pored all of their hopes and dreams into the students who came through Roosevelt’s doors. I am a benefactor of those hopes and dreams.

Robert Eugene Jones (1970–1990)

Byron Eugene Jones, MBA

Class of 1980

My father was Robert Eugene Jones, principal of Gary Roosevelt High School from 1970 until 1990. Prior to 1970, he served as assistant principal under Warren Anderson. During his tenure as assistant principal, my father understood he had a clearly defined role. In fact, each assistant had a specific job; my father’s primary role as assistant principal was chief disciplinarian. I feel this was, in a way, the precursor to what evolved into the position of Dean of Students. At the time my father was the young, energetic member of the administrative staff who was not afraid to interact directly with the students. I believe this factored into his role as disciplinarian, kind of a community relations role as the police have in many communities. It is sometimes easier to control a group if there is a certain amount of respect between the two entities and a familiarity exists. Activating disciplinary actions are a bit easier if a bond exists. I learned this lesson as a youth sports coach and later a substitute teacher.

There is a movie, “Stand by Me,” about a principal in a predominately Black high school in New Jersey run by Joe Clark. My father was the prototype for Joe Clark, including the bullhorn and non-stop motion of his days. In fact, my father and Joe Clark had striking similarities in style, but the main common denominator was their mutual love and passion for teaching, leading, and molding young minds. “Uncle Bob,” as he was affectionately known by the students of the 70s and 80s, was an innovator, a motivator, an educator, and a paternal figure to thousands of young African-American men and women. He created a Principal’s Advisory Council where he met with students to hear their concerns and a suggestion box for students to submit ideas for improvements.

When my father became principal at Roosevelt, the senior class averaged about 9% honor students and athletes were the most popular students. While athletics was important, my father felt more emphasis had to be placed on academics. So, in the early 1970 s, he started an incentive program that rewarded students that made the honor roll each semester. The first phase of this program was printing all honor students’ names in the Gary newspapers. This psychologically raised the self-esteem of students on the honor roll. Prior to that, honor students would take a back seat to the achievements of the great athletes of Roosevelt. My father believed that everyone enjoyed seeing their name in print and being recognized in a positive light; he was right. The second phase of the plan was to honor those students who made the honor roll every marking period by having an annual banquet and ceremony presenting the honor roll students with a trophy. Again, everyone likes to be rewarded and recognized for their achievements in a similar fashion to the manner athletes are revered; he was right again. By the time he retired in 1990, the percentage of honor roll students graduating climbed from 9% to 22%, while the number of students matriculating to institutions of higher learning rose dramatically.

Roosevelt had many ground-breaking events and activities during the Robert Jones years. To him though, the greatest achievement of the school during his time in command was the increase in students graduating with honors and the popularity of the annual Honors Banquet and Award Ceremony. The Banquet was a tangible symbol of his success. A great intangible was whenever we walked down the street scores of people would approach us and tell me how profound an effect my dad had on their lives and how the quality of their lives was enriched because he, like the principals before him, took the time to simply show that their principal truly cared about their welfare. So, sharing my father’s love, time, and attention with thousands of kids was invaluable.

Footnotes

Bios

Rosemary Anderson Davis, MA, received her BA from Oberlin College and her MA in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. Her career has included editing in the U.S. Department of State; teaching and consulting in elementary, middle, and high schools; and non-profit public policy work in the areas of health care, education, economic development, county government and the environment in Washington, D.C.

Byron Eugene Jones, MBA, is Vice President and Environmental Client Advisor with the Marsh USA IIc Environmental Practice and a member of the Practice’s Northeast Region. He is currently based in the metro-Atlanta, GA area. The valedictorian of the 1980 graduating class of Gary Roosevelt High School, Byron graduated from Tuskegee University with a BS degree in chemical engineering and with a MA degree in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix. Prior to joining Marsh, Byron was a Senior Environmental Broker with Willis Towers Watson. He was also the President of Jones Consulting Group, which he opened in 2009 to provide risk management consulting services for small and mid-sized light industrial and commercial clients.

Randall C. Morgan, Jr., MD, MBA, is the President and CEO of the W. Montague Cobb/NMA Health Institute. He received his MD degree from Howard University and served as a resident in Orthopedic Surgery at Northwestern University and as a Pediatric Orthopedic Fellow at Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati. He later received an MBA degree from the University of South Florida. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Orthopedic Surgery and the American Board of Managed Care Medicine.

Bernard C. Watson, PhD, earned his degree from the University of Chicago. He was deputy superintendent for planning in the Philadelphia public school system, a professor and later vice president for academic administration at Temple University, and president of the William Penn Foundation. He continues to be active on boards of a variety of corporate and non-profit organizations. He is the author of multiple books, including Colored, Negro, Black: Chasing the American Dream and In Spite of the System: The Individual and Educational Reform.