Only in Oklahoma: Teacher Walked Here and Left His Footprint
By GENE CURTIS
After working his way through college in Mississippi during the early 20th century, Ellis Walker Woods saw a flier advertising the need for black teachers in Oklahoma.
And because he had no other mode of transportation, he began walking toward the Sooner state, stopping periodically along the way to work on farms in return for food and occasional lodging.
There’s no record of how long it took Woods to walk the 500 miles from Memphis to Sapulpa, where he took a job teaching in a Creek County school in 1911. A year later, he became principal of a Tulsa school that was to become Booker T. Washington High School.
He kept that job until his death 35 years later at the age of 63, only a week after county commissioners awarded a $1.44 million contract for construction of a new BTW high school — thanks more to Woods than to any other person.
Woods, who was a leader in educational, civic and church affairs during his years in Tulsa, served on several committees and commissions seeking a new school building to replace the substandard and obsolete building shared by the high school and elementary school.
His efforts also helped get out the vote to pass a county bond issue.
The high school held some classes in what were called “jitney” buildings on the school grounds and other classes were held in a nearby church. Elementary and high school students used the same auditorium, gymnasium, cafeteria and grounds.
When the new school, which has since been replaced by another building, was opened on Sept. 3, 1950, Woods’ widow, Anna, cut the ribbon to the building that one visitor said was “fancy enough to make me want to go back to school.”
Woods was born in the hills of eastern Mississippi to freed slave parents and worked hard for his education — picking cotton and hiring out as a farmhand. He even taught summer schools in Mississippi and Arkansas to finance his education at Rust College in Holly Springs, Miss.
And then he began his trek to Oklahoma.
When Woods became principal, the high school didn’t have a building of its own or even a name. It was housed in a four- room frame building that also housed the old Dunbar Elementary School, and was called the Separate School for Coloreds.
The matter of a name created a controversy — some wanted to name the new high school after W.E.B. DuBois, a civil rights activist and educator. But there was stronger support to name the school for Booker T. Washington, a former slave who also became a civil rights leader and who had dedicated himself to education and became a teacher and the founder of Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.
The first unit of BTW was built in 1913 and a second unit was added five years later. There wasn’t much change again until the new building opened in 1950.
The BTW building was untouched in the 1921 race riot although every house surrounding it was destroyed. The school building became a haven for refugees where the Red Cross supplied health care to the injured and temporary living quarters.
The North Tulsa Sertoma Club is leading a drive to build a memorial to Woods on the Oklahoma State University-Tulsa campus, which is in the area that was called the Black Wall Street at the time of the 1921 riot.
Woods was a former president of the Oklahoma Association of Negro Teachers, an officer of the Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, chairman of the Hutcherson branch of the YMCA for several years, served as a trustee of the Vernon A.M.E. Church and was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Woods was known as a motivator for his students, including attending a weekly Friday afternoon assembly for students and teachers alike. Whatever he had to say always ended with:
“You’re as good as 90 percent of the people and better than the other 10 percent.”
Photographic research by Rachele Vaughan
Gene Curtis 581-8304gene.curtis@tulsaworld.com
Gene Curtis is a former managing editor of the Tulsa World.
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