My Contribution

September 2005

A Lifetime Fighter For Rights
and Respect

When North Carolina retiree Agnes Chavis started working with special education students in 1967, she was astonished at the discrimination they encountered. “Other teachers didn’t want them in the classroom and other students wouldn’t play with them,” she recalls. “I fought to show that [my students] could go to homeroom and eat with other children—and deserved to be treated fairly.”

This American Indian empathized with her students. Sometimes, when they came to her crying, she would cry with them. “The children felt discriminated against, as had I growing up,” says Chavis, a Lumbee Indian and the daughter of tenant farmers.

“I remember walking to school and having the White children pass by on their big, yellow bus—they didn’t have buses for the Indian students,” she says. “I also remember the theater being divided into three sections: White, Black, and Indian. I think sometimes people forget that ‘Whites only’ left out Indians, too.”

When Chavis completed college and became an educator, American Indian children still faced big odds. She taught at her former school, the all-Indian Ashpole Center, for 12 years with outdated supplies and overcrowded classrooms—as many as 52 students per room.

“We taught our children that they had to be the best,” Chavis says. “We saw them get into great colleges. A lot of them have come back home to help their people.”

Years later, Chavis began teaching special education students at an integrated Robeson County school. Her advice: “Don’t go in there feeling sorry for them—that doesn’t work. If they work on a slower pace, then you work with them at that pace.” She eventually became a resource teacher, visiting all Robeson County schools to ensure that students with special needs had proper care and equal rights.

In 1990, after 47 years as an educator, Chavis retired to care for her ailing father. But for this self-proclaimed workaholic, retired life is easily as busy as active employment. She is president of the Robeson County Retired School Personnel and vice-president of North Carolina Retired School Personnel. She is also a volunteer for breast cancer awareness and hospice care. And she’s an NEA Board of Directors member for NEA-Retired.

The National Indian Education Association named Chavis the National Indian Educator of the Year in 1982, and she received an NEA medallion for her work in women’s leadership. In July 2005, NEA awarded her the Leo Reano Memorial Award in recognition of her efforts to promote social justice.

At 79, Chavis shows no signs of slowing down. She lives by a saying her mother taught her: “It’s better to wear out than to rest out.”

—Daniel Moise

For More

The National Indian Education Association  has extensive information about the history and current stateof education for Indian children. NIEA and NEA work together extensively.

You’ll also find information on American Indian and Alaska Native children and the achievement gaps.  

Nearly half of American Indian and Alaska Native children drop out of high school without a regular diploma, according to the Harvard Civil Rights Project.