James Yadkin Joyner

Image source: James Yadkin Joyner

James Yadkin Joyner (1862-1954) was one of the key leaders in the explosive growth of public education in North Carolina in the early twentieth century. Educated at the University of North Carolina, Joyner was a classmate of Charles B. Aycock, future governor; Charles Duncan McIver, founding president of the Woman’s College in Greensboro, today known as UNC-G; and Edwin A. Alderman, future president of UNC. Joyner’s most important contributions were made as the North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction. Appointed to that position in 1902 by Gov. Charles B. Aycock, Joyner continued in that key role until 1919. During his 17-year tenure as superintendent, Joyner oversaw a virtual revolution in public education with the establishment of thousands of public schools and libraries, including a statewide high school system.

Recognizing that the burgeoning public school system needed professionally trained teachers, Joyner campaigned with Thomas Jarvis, W. H. Ragsdale, and James L. Fleming for the establishment of East Carolina Teachers Training School. As superintendent of public instruction, Joyner served as the ex-officio chair of the Board of Trustees of ECTTS from its legislative founding in 1907, until 1919, his last year as superintendent.

Like Aycock and many early-twentieth century progressives, Joyner believed wholeheartedly in universal education and equal opportunity in education. However, his development of these beliefs remained within the “separate but equal” system of legalized segregation that characterized the Jim Crow South, and much of the nation. Thus, he had no qualms in seeing the charter of ECTTS define the institution as one meant for the education of white men and women. At the same time, Joyner was an advocate of public funding for African American schools, even though he rarely called for levels of funding that were equal to those provided white schools.

More than any other political figure in the state of North Carolina, Joyner oversaw, as state superintendent of public instruction, the creation of the racially segregated system of public education that prevailed largely unquestioned until the Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) that overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) by declaring that “separate but equal” public educational facilities were unconstitutional.

Sources

• Downs, Gregory P. “University Men, Social Science, and White Supremacy in North Carolina.” Journal of Southern History, Vol. 75, No. 2 (May 2009), 271-273.
• James Yadkin Joyner Papers. East Carolina Manuscript Collection. J. Y. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina.
• Leloudis, James L. Schooling the New South: Pedagogy, Self and Society in North Carolina, 1880-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
• North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Biennial Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of North Carolina: 1900-1901 and 1901-1902. Raleigh: North Carolina Dept. of Public Instruction, 1902.

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