TARBORO —
When Walter Alexander Pattillo came to Tarboro 1912, he joined an established educational system that was already serving the black community. Building on that foundation, he developed a comprehensive union school (first grade through twelfth grade) for the area blacks.
Public education was slow in developing in Edgecombe County. Turner and Bridgers, in their History of Edgecombe County North Carolina (1920), describe private education efforts beginning well before the Revolutionary War and continuing into the 20th century. While North Carolina created the common school system in 1840, Edgecombe County did not participate until 1854. Public education came to a virtual standstill during the Civil War and was slow to recover following the war.
During this time, public education in Edgecombe County was intended for white students, although it is possible, but unlikely, that an occasional free black may have benefitted, too.
In 1867 the American Missionary Association, together with St. Paul AME Zion Church, established a school for negro children. At the same time, a second school for negro children was established, also with support from a northern charitable organization, on an unidentified plantation near Tarboro.
Free (common) schools had returned to Edgecombe County by the late 1870s, and by 1879 there were 28 white schools and 44 negro schools. During this period Negro schools were erected in Princeville, Battleboro, Whitakers, and elsewhere in the county.
The concept of free graded schools, to replace the common schools, gained support throughout North Carolina, and, in 1883, the Number 1 Township of Edgecombe County voted to raise taxes in support of a pair of graded schools, one for white children in Tarboro and a second for black children in Princeville.
The Board of Trustees members for the Princeville school were John C. Dancy, H. C. Cherry, Victor E. Howard, Benjamin Norfleet, Edward Zoella, Henry S. Spragins, and W. H. Knight. (Dancy, Cherry, and Howard were black.) In 1888, W. P. Mabson, a graduate of Lincoln College (now Lincoln University), was employed as Principal of the Princeville School. He was succeeded in 1899 by John Craven Jones, a graduate of Oberlin College, and in 1907 by William Augustine Perry, a native of Tarboro and a graduate of Yale University. Under the tutelage of Perry the school graduated its first eighth-grade class in 1909. During his administration, the school population doubled in size and the school building was enlarged into a two-story facility with an auditorium.
In 1912, Walter Alexander Pattillo succeeded Perry, coming from Oxford, North Carolina. As principal of the Princeville Graded School, he began adding high school courses to the curriculum. In 1924, the Tarboro Colored High School was erected in East Tarboro, and Pattillo became its first principal. He continued to be a strong force in Tarboro public education until his retirement in 1946.
The Tarboro Colored High School building was a Rosenwald school. Located east of East Street between E. Wilson and E. St. John Streets, the two-story brick structure was classified as an eight-teacher school. The auditorium portion, added soon after, was financed by four private black citizens from the East Tarboro community. The building was demolished in the early 1970s.
W. A. Pattillo was born May 18, 1876 in Virgilina, Virginia, a small town on the North Carolina border about 20 miles northwest of Oxford, North Carolina. He was the fourth son of the fourteen children born to the Rev. W. A. and Mrs. Mary Ida Hart Pattillo. [The Rev. Pattillo, born into slavery, was active as a populist, advocated improved economic condition, and established the Colored Orphanage Asylum in Oxford in 1882.]
After graduating in 1901 from Shaw University with a degree in theology, W. A. Pattillo served as principal of the Oxford Graded School for ten years. In 1912 he accepted an appointment to the position of principal of the Princeville school, and he and his family moved to Tarboro where they took up residence at 520 St. James Street.
On February 14, 1901, W. A. Pattillo was married to Sallie Jeanette Watson of Henderson, North Carolina. Four children were born to this union: Walter Hugh Pattillo, Anna Mae Pattillo Murdaugh, William Charles Pattillo, and Harold Claudius Pattillo. Each followed their father and mother, attending and graduating from Shaw University. Walter Hugh succeeded his father as principal of the W. A. Pattillo High School on his father’s retirement in 1946. Anna Mae married and lived with her husband in Atlanta, Georgia, assisting him in his mortuary business. William Charles taught school at Pattillo High School and was also a free-lance muralist. Harold Claudius taught public school and lived in Montclair, New Jersey.
W. A. Pattillo joined Union Baptist Church and, for twenty years, served as both deacon and clerk of the church. At the same time, he was a member of the Old Eastern Missionary Baptist Association of which Union Baptist Church was an affiliate. He is remembered as having required that each of the teachers in his employ at the Pattillo High School attend Sunday school and Sunday church services every week at Union Baptist Church.
During his lifetime, Mr. Pattillo was a Mason, an Oddfellow, a Knight of Pythias, and a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity. He was also active in civic affairs, serving as a member of the City Recreational Committee and as the president of the Edgecombe Credit Union.
In 1943, he was honored by having the Tarboro Colored High School renamed the W. A. Pattillo High School. The first class to graduate with this new name was the class of 1944. The class of 1949 further honored him by dedicating their school annual yearbook to him and by erecting a brick wall and marble arch in front of the school and having hewn into the stone of the archway, overhead, “W. A. Pattillo High School.”
At the time of his death in 1951, he was survived by his wife and children and two grandchildren, Leatrice P. Terry and Dr. Walter Hugh Pattillo, Jr. (Professor Emeritus in Biology, North Carolina Central University, and currently living in Durham, North Carolina).
C. Rudolph Knight is a Tarboro native, a retired community college educator, and a research historian. Look for his monthly reports on Edgecombe County’s African-American history on The Daily Southerner Community page.
Sources include:
History of Edgecombe County, North Carolina, by J. Kelly Turner and Jno. L. Bridgers, Jr. (1920)
New Journal and Guide, November 24, 1951.
Oxford Public Ledger, March 28, 2002.
Personal interview with Dr. W. H. Pattillo, Jr.
Local History
Related Photos
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Faculty, circa 1920, Front row, left to right: Laura Hammonds, others unknown, Middle row, left to right: five unknowns, Beatrice Garrett Burnette, Callie Bryan Hyman, and W. A. Pattillo, Back row left: Sally Jeanette Pattillo, others unknown Please help in identifying the unknowns. If you can identify any of them, contact C. Rudolph Knight at 252-823-0275.
W. A. Pattillo: Educator, Community Leader
- Local History
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70 arts and crafts vendors hallmark of the Happening on the Common
Arts and crafts are a hallmark of the Happening on the Common and this year was no exception. Live arts and crafts projects for children and vendors selling their handcrafted wares both were part of Saturday’s happening.
P.J. Shafer of Rocky Mount sold her pottery, which ranged from traditional mugs and bowls to mushroom shaped pottery suitable for decorating a yard and a piece of pottery with a face carved into it and horns protruding from the top, suitable for hanging on a wall. -
ECU Orchestra highlights end of concert season with free performance
The last concert of this season’s Edgecombe Performance Series is a free, afternoon concert featuring the East Carolina University (ECU) Orchestra
Dr. Jorge Richter will direct the symphony in the concert at 3 p.m. April 21 in the Keihin Auditorium on Edgecombe Community College’s Tarboro campus. The audience will enjoy “Orchestral Favorites,” including Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dances Nos. 5 & 6 and Peter I. Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Opus 64. The concert will also highlight the winner of the 2012-2013 ECU Concerto Competition. -
United Manor Courts: An African American Community Self-Help Project
This is the narrative of how four community churches came together in a self-help effort and enabled several dozens of low-income families to have safe and adequate housing in the early 1970s. A by-product of this project was home ownership by many of these families.
Prior to the 1919 flood, the majority of African Americans lived in Princeville after it started in 1865. Many residents of Princeville were day workers, crossing the bridge into Tarboro each morning and returning to Princeville each evening, a convenient arrangement for all concerned. However, this pattern was interrupted by the 1919 flood when the high water prevented this back-and forth daily trek, disrupting the work force to which the white community had become accustomed. -
Edgecombe natives Charles Lavinghouse, Richard Cherry & Hamilton Pittman gave their lives for freedom
Of the 36 Edgecombe County natives that enlisted in the 35th, 36th, and 37th US Colored Troops in New Bern, N.C., in 1863, orginally known as the African Brigade, twenty were members of the 36th USCT (see attached list). The African Brigade regiments were orginally named the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd N.C. Colored Volunteers, then later re-classified as the 35th, 36th and 37th U.S. Colored Troops.
The 36th USCT (orginally the 2nd N.C. Colored Volunteers) was one of six USCT regiments that made their mark at the Battle of New Market Heights, Va, in September 1864, outside of Richmond. -
ECC faculty member publishes book on local history
Edgecombe Community College faculty member Monika S. Fleming has published her fifth book on local history, "Legendary Locals of Edgecombe and Nash Counties."
Fleming is program coordinator of the Historic Preservation Trades program at the college.
She worked with the Twin County Museum and Hall of Fame, Braswell and Edgecombe libraries, and the Edgecombe County Veterans Military Museum to identify more than 180 local legends who are highlighted in the book. -
The Tarboro Jubilee Singers
Most readers will remember and recognize the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the a capella choral group from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The Jubilee Singers were organized in 1871 and their tours were (and continue to be) a successful means of raising funds for the institution. The popular group is known for singing spirituals as well as a wide variety of other songs.
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Roberson School, a Brief History and Legacy
Note: The Edgecombe County School Board, at its April 9, 2012 meeting, approved the closure of the Roberson Center for Educational Achievement. Final approval by the State Board of Education is expected. Future use of the building has not yet been determined.
The first Roberson School, a three-teacher wooden school, was located next to old Mayo Chapel Church, about half a mile northeast of Mayo Crossroads on NC 42. The school, like other African-American schools across the county, served a rural, low-wealth, and agarian population, mostly sharecroppers and small farmers -
CRIME ROUNDUP
The following people were either cited for traffic violations or charged with crimes during the past week by the Tarboro Police Department. -
Legendary Locals & Twin County Hall of Fame
It is almost spring and each spring since 2004 the Twin County Hall of Fame has asked the public to nominate people worthy of being inducted. Nominations are collected and reviewed by a special committee of people representing both Edgecombe and Nash counties and Rocky Mount. The committee then proposes a list to the board to be inducted in the fall.
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Mother seeks answers in daughter's death
A mother of the woman who was killed when she was run over by a car is still looking for answers to her daughter's death.
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