Clifton F. West was principal of Grady Colored School in rural southeast Arkansas.
He was born December 20, 1880, near Bolton, Hinds County, Mississippi. He began public community school at the age of eight. His widowed mother, with the cooperation of the other children, sent him in 1896 to Alcorn A&M College, then Westside, now Alcorn State University.
Alcorn State University was founded in 1871, and named in honor of Mississippi Governor, James L. Alcorn.
Clifton F. West graduated from the Industrial Department (1901) at Alcorn as a painter, and from the Normal Department in 1903. He was "given the management of the family farm and served in that capacity (1903-1912) when he began teaching."
Professor West was a teacher at Winterburn School in Hinds County for eight years (1912-1920) until he came to Arkansas in November, 1921, and began teaching at Cady School at Varner, in Lincoln County. Arkansas. Cady School was a one teacher school, and in 1924 became a two teacher school due to increased enrollment to about 120 pupils. During his administration, there were "fourteen to graduate from the eighth grade. Three of these went to Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. Two finished there and went on to attend Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. The other was in the eleventh grade. One went to Dunbar High School in Little Rock." At this time, there were no high schools for African-American children in Lincoln County, and few in the state.
In 1936, Professor West "was elected principal of Grady Colored Junior High School, a four teacher school. The enrollment was about 180 and increased to about 270 " by 1938. Between 1936 and 1939, he recorded that there had been twelve graduates. One entered the Wendell Phillips School, Chicago, Illinois; one was attending high school in St. Louis, Missouri; one entered Merrill High School in Pine Bluff. In 1939, " in the State Basketball Tournament, our Boys Team won the State Junior Championship, bringing home the Trophy given by the State for such distinction."
Grady, Arkansas, was the ancestral home of my Bluford, Turner, Williams, and Johnson families.
Professor West was married to my paternal great aunt, Drucilla Turner, on December 20, 1925
until her death October 16, 1955 at Grady. Drucilla Turner West was also a teacher.
I spent a lot of time in Grady, visiting family, during my youth. From my paternal grandmother's back door, I could look into the entrance of Grady Colored School. I attended there for a short time
when I was in the second grade. My mother, at one time, attended there, and also volunteered at the school-helping in the kitchen, planting flowers, and helping with the Easter Egg Hunt. Five of my mother's nephews attended school there. Children of my paternal great uncle were also students of Professor West. It was my mother's brother, mentioned in the report, who attended Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago.
Sources: Across the Horizon, by Cornelia Kirkley Foster
and Recollections of Gladys Turner Finney
The image is from the cover of a Grady High School diploma.
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