Chapter 4: New Perspectives on Progressive Education: HBCU Lab High Schools during Jim Crow

Quiester Craig squared his 12 year-old shoulders, stole a glance at his copresenter, Jessica Pettus, and readied himself for his part in the 1949 laboratory school commencement program. He looked out among the scores of students, parents, teachers, and professors and began: “I am proud to be a Negro.”¹ Every fiber of his being felt the honor of having been selected to recite the poem—a privilege which Craig remembers to this day. A scholarship student at “Lab High,” Craig’s education at the Alabama State College Laboratory High School gave him the foundation to excel, and that he did. By his junior year he was accepted at Morehouse College on a full scholarship; his education and career continued to climb. Six decades later, Dr. Craig celebrated his retirement as Dean of the School of Business and Economics at North Carolina A&T State University, where more than one thousand professional colleagues and personal friends from across the nation gathered in tribute to his substantial contributions to educational progress. Today at seventy-six, the 6’4” former Lab High student leaned forward, intensifying his message, conveying import and purpose, “At Lab High, we were taught to be change agents,” he declared.²