Carrie Williams facts for kids

Caroline "Carrie" M. Williams (née Edwards) (c. 1866 – January 22, 1930) was an African-American educator in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Williams fought and won the significant 1898 civil rights case, Williams v. Board of Education of Fairfax District, which upheld West Virginia's law requiring equal school terms, and established equal pay for teachers regardless of their race.

Williams was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, around 1866, and was a school teacher in both Ohio and West Virginia. In 1889 she married a coal miner in Tucker County, West Virginia, and in 1892, she was hired by the Board of Education of Fairfax District as a schoolteacher at the Coketon Colored School in Coketon, West Virginia. For the 1892–1893 school year, the school board set the length of the term at eight months for white schools, and 5 months for the Coketon Colored School. J. R. Clifford, West Virginia's first African-American practicing attorney, advised Williams to teach for eight months, and then sue for her wages for the three months beyond the prescribed term.

When the school year ended in June 1893, Williams presented the school board with a bill for her final three months. That month, Clifford filed suit on Williams' behalf. The Third Judicial Circuit Court jury in Tucker County found in Williams' favor and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. The supreme court heard the case in June 1898 and decided in Williams' favor in November 1898. Williams and her younger children relocated to Chicago, where she died in 1930.

Early life and educational career

The Davis Coal and Coke Company's Coketon Colliery in Coketon

Edwards was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, around 1866, the daughter of Jacob and Rachel Edwards, who were both born in Virginia. Edwards taught as a schoolteacher in Ohio, and then relocated and continued teaching in West Virginia. On November 20, 1889, Edwards married Abraham L. Williams in Thomas in Tucker County, West Virginia. Her husband was born in present-day Mineral County in 1861. Williams and her husband had nine children: May, Nevada, Robert, Russell, Irving, Ethel, Josephine, Juanita, and Wendell Phillips.

In 1892, Williams was hired as a schoolteacher by the Board of Education of Fairfax District to teach at the two-room Coketon Colored School in the mining community of Coketon. At this time, Williams was 26, was pregnant with her third child, and her husband Abraham worked as a coal miner. Coketon was located along the western side of North Fork Blackwater River on the Western Maryland Railway, within Tucker County's Fairfax District. Coketon was established by the Davis Coal and Coke Company of Henry Gassaway Davis for the purposes of producing coke for the coal mines of nearby Thomas. The Davis Coal and Coke Company also had its headquarters in Coketon. The influx of timber workers and coal miners doubled Tucker County's population in 1890 from 6,459 people to 13,433 in 1900. The increased population included the county's African-American population, which increased from 183 in 1890 to 253 in 1900. The majority of the county's African-American population resided in Coketon.

Williams v. Board of Education of Fairfax District

School board establishment of unequal school terms

A photograph of Rail Falls Road (West Virginia Secondary Route 27/3), along a former rail bed, between Coketon and Douglas

The residents of Tucker County's Fairfax District voted for an eight-month school term. However, the Board of Education of Fairfax District decided to set the length of the school term for white schools at eight months, and set the length of the term for Coketon Colored School at five months. The school board decreased the school's term as a cost cutting measure, and because they expected limited enrollment in the district's African-American schools.

For the 1892–1893 school year, the Board of Education of Fairfax District tendered a five-month contract to Williams, which she refused to sign. The school board repeatedly asked Williams to sign the five-month contract, and she refused each request. Despite the lack of a signed contract, the school board allowed Williams to teach for five months. J. R. Clifford, West Virginia's first African-American practicing attorney, advised Williams to teach at the Coketon Colored School for eight months, and then sue the school board for her wages for the three months beyond the prescribed five-month term. Clifford also advised Williams to present the school board with a bill for her final three months of wages, and if the board refused to pay her, he would file a lawsuit on her behalf.

Clifford provided Williams with this legal advice because he was aware that Third Judicial Circuit Court judge Joseph Thatcher Hoke's political views were supportive of African-Americans. Hoke was an advocate for the African-American Storer College, and while serving as prosecuting attorney in Berkeley County, he boarded at his home in Martinsburg, Free Will Baptist mission teachers who taught freedmen in Berkeley and Jefferson counties.

At the conclusion of the district's five-month school term for the African-American students, the school board demanded that Williams close the Coketon Colored School while the white schools remained open. Williams refused to close the school, and with the support of the Coketon community's African-American parents, she kept the school open for the additional three months. She received her salary regularly for the first five months, but she was not paid for the remaining three months. When the school year ended in June 1893, Williams presented the school board with a bill for her final three months. Williams' three months' salary totaled $120 (equivalent to $3,908 in 2022 dollars) and the board also deducted $1 from a previous month's salary for failure to return a term report required by law. The school board refused to pay Williams because she had continued to teach knowing that she had been presented with a five-month contract.

Lawsuit and appeals

J. R. Clifford

On June 30, 1893, Clifford and prominent Republican lawyer Alston G. Dayton filed a lawsuit on Williams' behalf against the Board of Education of Fairfax District in the Third Judicial Circuit Court in Tucker County. On August 20, 1893, Clifford received a letter from the Tucker County Board of Education secretary, written on Davis Coal and Coke Company stationery, warning him not to move forward with the case. That following November, Clifford filed a lawsuit against the Fairfax District school board for the $120 owed to Williams for her three months' wages, plus the $1 withheld from her for not filing a report.

The case did not appear before the circuit court until March 1894. Clifford argued that West Virginia state law required equal school terms for both white and African-American children, and therefore, Williams was owed her salary for the additional three months. The counsel for the school district argued that Williams was not owed pay for the three months because she lacked a written contract. Third Judicial Circuit Court judge Hoke presided over the court's proceedings and the jury found in Williams' favor. Hoke ordered the school board to pay Williams $139, which included interest, and the cost of her legal fees. The school board appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. On June 11, 1898, the case was submitted to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the circuit court's ruling – again deciding in Williams' favor – on November 16, 1898. Clifford and Dayton represented Williams' case at the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's decision upheld West Virginia's law requiring equal school terms, and also established equal pay for teachers regardless of their race.

In the Supreme Court's ruling, Justice Marmaduke H. Dent wrote: "Discrimination against the colored people, because of color alone, as to privileges, immunities, and equal legal protection, is contrary to public policy and the law of the land. If any discrimination as to education should be made, it should be favorable to, and not against, the colored people." According to Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham in African American National Biography (2013), this case was "one of the few, if not the first, cases in the South to state that discrimination on the basis of color was illegal." Gates and Higginbotham also noted that this ruling had the effect of "attracting highly educated teachers to the state and challenging nearby states to provide equal pay as well."

Later life, death, and legacy

Williams' husband Abraham died of consumption on August 30, 1913. Williams' daughter Nevada died in 1918 during the influenza pandemic, and she was interred in an unmarked gravesite in Thomas' Rose Hill Cemetery. Williams and her younger children relocated to Chicago to be with her older children. Williams died on January 22, 1930, in Chicago.

The state historical marker in Thomas detailing the Coketon Colored School

In 2011, Williams and her case were recognized with a highway historical marker as part of the West Virginia Highway Historical Marker Program, which is managed by West Virginia Archives and History, a part of the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. The marker, located at the Tucker County Courthouse in Parsons, reads:

In 1892, Coketon Colored School teacher Carrie Williams sued the local school board for equal pay. She was represented by the first African American lawyer in WV, J. R. Clifford, in front of Judge Hoke. Local jury found for her and she won appeal at WV Supreme Court. This early civil rights case affirmed equal school terms for African Americans in WV.

Also in 2011, a historical marker for the Coketon Colored School, which also mentioned Williams, was erected on Douglas Road (West Virginia Secondary Route 27) near Buxton and Landstreet Gallery and Studios in Thomas. This marker reads:

Segregated school located along North Fork of the Blackwater that served Coketon, center of coal and coke empire of H. G. Davis. In 1892 teacher Carrie Williams, represented by J. R. Clifford, state's first African American lawyer, sued when county reduced school's term. She won equal pay and terms for black students in WV. School closed in 1954.

In 2020, artist Alison "Ali" Printz completed a 21-foot (6.4 m) by 17-foot (5.2 m) mural of Williams along the back of the Buxton and Landstreet Gallery and Studios in Thomas, facing toward the Blackwater Canyon Trail along the North Fork Blackwater River.