Picott, J. Rupert

Executive secretary of the Virginia Teachers Association, vice president of the National Education Association (NEA), president of the American Teachers Association, John Rupert Picott (1910–1989) worked to develop a proficient teacher corps and to correct the educational, social, and political inequities faced by African Americans. Distinguished by his activism in education and politics, Picott was a teacher, principal, and association leader who labored in a state with a wide variation in race relations. In 1941, Picott helped to establish a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People during its salary equalization campaign in Virginia and elsewhere. Dismissed as principal in retaliation for successful litigation for equal salaries for African American teachers, Picott became in 1944 the first full-time executive secretary of the Virginia Teachers Association (VTA), a Black teacher's association. He shaped its agenda to reflect the legal, political, educational, and social challenges of a segregated society. Picott was editor of the association's publication, wrote a regular column on the Virginia General Assembly, encouraged teacher professional growth and involvement in legislative matters and in voting registration campaigns. At its peak, the VTA had a membership of 10,000. By 1949, Picott was one of the main insurgents to demand equal standing for African American educators in the powerful NEA, in which African Americans had only marginal participation. His remarks and activities in the 1950s and 1960s at NEA conventions helped to promote social justice as NEA policy.

As an NEA delegate, Picott challenged the leadership and membership of the NEA to make equity a reality for African American educators. He also actively sought the NEA's assistance in crises such as the closing of public schools in Prince Edward County in 1959. Picott and VTA members were involved with the placement of dismissed Black teachers, the education of youngsters in “training centers” established by the Prince Edward County Christian Association, and the recruitment of teachers for the Prince Edward County Free Schools. Picott was a skillful communicator who understood the tensions and the perspective of multiple participants in a race conscious society. He developed a network of allies through the National Council of State Teachers Associations (NCOSTA)—an organization he directed until the 1960s—which strengthened the bonds between the Black teacher associations and the American Teachers Association (ATA) and which funneled money to the NAACP to assist teachers unfairly dismissed. He was executive director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), edited the Negro History Bulletin, and authored several books on Black education. Picott is credited with making Black History Week a month-long celebration that is widely observed in schools throughout the country. In challenging the Jim Crow laws in Virginia, Picott led a successful campaign to desegregate the Mosque, a Richmond theater, and secured better working conditions for African Americans in the Virginia State Department of Education. Picott regretted the fact that as integration progressed, African American educators did not achieve a full measure of leadership roles in many newly merged teacher associations.

...