The Davis Colored School

The Davis Colored School. Segregated Education in an Age of Booming Industry. , Although West Virginia was not universally a "Jim Crow" segregated state, state law required separate facilities for schooling. Davis and Coketon, a community near Thomas, each had separate schools for African American students. The African American communities in each town were closely connected; an article in the Charleston Advocate, a statewide, African American community newspaper (below right), promoted a joint Emancipation Celebration held by the two schools., The Davis Colored School, called the "Charles Sumner School" (below), opened in September, 1910, affiliated with the Mt. Zion Baptist Church. The 1917 report card (below left) belonged to Eugene "Gene" Barmer, son of the minister at Mt. Zion. Born in 1907, Gene later worked in local mines before a 1947 closure forced him to find other work locally and in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Returning to Davis, he retired from a job at the West Virginia Correctional Facility for Boys. He lived to age 83, and with his wife, Elaine, raised two children. Gene is shown retired (below), playing his guitar., Their son, Peter ("Pete," below, portrait) attended Coketon Colored School from first through fourth grades, starting at age six in September 1950. In May 1954, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision passed the U.S. Supreme Court. Most of West Virginia, including Tucker County, integrated schools with the new school year that September, when Peter began attending Davis Elementary School., Gene and Elaine visited West Virginia State University when their children attended college there (below left)., (Captions):, Tucker County's Board of Education faced a landmark civil rights case when Coketon teacher Carrie Williams sued it in 1894. J.R. Clifford, the state's first African American attorney, argued her case, which produced one of the first rulings in U.S. history to declare racial discrimination illegal., A state highway marker (right) commemorates the Coketon civil rights case. Doris Green (nee Redman), who attended the Coketon Colored School with her sister Dorothy Twyman, later posed with the marker., Layouts and text by David A. Vago Historic Resource Planning and Design