Ok, I'm Kenneth Norton and I attended the Ada Jenkins School back in the
thirties. I first started school at a little one teacher across the
street behind, just off of Mock Circle. Really, the building is still
there, but it is turned into a house. Mrs. Brown was the teacher there,
Mrs. Josephine Brown. And we had a three-teacher school across the road
from that one
Page 2 that shows up on a picture I have made
around 1938 or 1939. That was a three-teacher school. I don't remember
going to school in that building because somewhere around 1938-39 I
think the new building was built which we call the Ada Jenkins building.
A picture was made shortly after we got into the school and of course I
bought one of the pictures. Mrs. Ada Jenkins' picture appears on that.
I don't remember how many students we had then, but it was a relatively
small school. It was called a high school and it went first through
eleventh grade. We didn't have a twelfth grade at Ada Jenkins school, so
we graduated after the eleventh grade. So, if you took chemistry one
year whoever came through that class would have to take physics. Physics
was offered one year and chemistry the next, so I missed chemistry in
high school because physics was the subject when I came through. We did
not have a principal there until a fellow by the name of Lorenzo Poe
(sp?) came.
We had one male teacher there before him. His name was Gordon. I don't
remember his first name. Mrs. Ada Jenkins was the lady in charge there,
but the principal was really at Davidson High School on what we called
School Street, what we now call South Street. Mr. Ives was the
Principal. Mr. Ives was Caucasian. Many people didn't know that - they
thought that Mrs. Jenkins was the principal. She was never the principal
Page 3 to my knowledge. Mr. Ives was the principal of
the school here that is used by a special group now. His son and I were
personal friends and played together - Claude Ives. The father was
Claude, the principal of Davidson High School at the time. Ada Jenkins
School as it is called now was called Davidson Colored High School.
It got the name of Ada Jenkins I believe after Mrs. Ada Jenkins died
because she was a wonderful person and a wonderful teacher. She made a
point of telling all the students when they came to her class that - she
usually taught seventh and eighth grades if I remember - that she didn't
like to spank, but if she spanked, you would forever remember it. A very
stern person. Perhaps a person that had a lot of motivation going for
her. She made a tremendous impression in my life because she always
talked about going to Yellowstone and her husband evidently was a
minister, but he had passed by the time I knew her. She had two
children: Plenny and Portia. She talked so much about geography and
having visited Yellowstone. It imbedded in my memory that I wanted to go
there someday, so I've been to Yellowstone and of course Yosemite too.
She made a great impression on I think every youngster who came through
her class.
I think Mrs. Brown was my first grade teacher and she could get me to do
almost anything in the world because she had a way
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of … a great motivator, she'd say: "Oh did you do that?" and the
expression that she gave would make you feel that you could do almost
anything.
I think the next teacher that I had, Mrs. Baucom (sp?), Bessie Baucom,
had three classes and also had so much going against her that I'm not
sure she was able to do a whole lot of teaching. How do you teach three
different groups of kids? She had third, fourth, and fifth grades -
maybe sixth - maybe it was fourth fifth and sixth. Seventh and eighth
went to Mrs. Jenkins.
We later got a Davidson girl to teach there. Her name was Zeddie Mae
Byers (sp?), and she also appears on this picture that was made back in
those early days.