The dedication of the Allen & Darlene Hancock Fellowship Hall
Community Organizers
Community Organizers
By Jonathan Gramling Part 2 of 3 On December 9, S.S. Morris Community AME Church dedicated its fellowship hall to Darlene Hancock and her late husband Allen who were the prime movers and shakers in establishing S.S. Morris back in the 1980s. Hancock played a significant role in establishing several local organizations including the local graduate chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority and the Madison Metropolitan Links. As we sat in her far west side home for an interview — Hancock moved back to Madison last year from Las Vegas last year after her husband Allen died — Hancock paged through several albums that recounted the strong role that she played in Madison’s African American community and Madison’s educational community as well before Allen and she retired in 1996 — he as principal of Franklin Elementary and she as principal of Glenn Stephens Elementary — and moved to Las Vegas. It was a role well-suited to her personality. When Hancock first came to Madison, she was an assistant high school principal at Memorial and then at East High School before becoming Madison’s first African American female principal when she landed at Glenn Stephens Elementary School. It was a principal position she almost didn’t get because of the good old boys network that existed at the district at the time. Hancock and another individual were up for the position at the time and the superintendent gave it to the White male even though Hancock was certified and he was not. Hancock wasn’t going to stand for any of that. She got a lawyer. “I filed a grievance against the school district,” Hancock said. “I was a member of the secondary principal’s association and they supported me. And I got me an attorney, Cheryl Weston. It was so funny. The judge told Clarence Sherrod, the district’ s attorney, to bring [the other candidate’s] and my records. He met us down there and he didn’t have the records. Cheryl said ‘Put him in jail.’” What ensued was a lot of negotiation between Hancock and the school district. Actually, it wasn’t a negotiation. It was a matter of Hancock holding firm until the school district came around to Hancock’s — and the law’s — point of view. “The superintendent told me ‘I can’t move you from East High School,’” Hancock recalled. “’Those kids all love you out there. You do so much for East High School.’ I said ‘Don, kids will love me every place I go and I would do so much for every place I go. So that’s not a selling point for me.’ Then he said ‘Well you think about being fair’ — I had certification for elementary, middle and high school and counseling and supervision — ‘you have a different set of certifications than Jerry and Jerry doesn’t have any. But he can handle elementary better to give him a good job.’ He was trying to tell me I should be considerate of Jerry’s position. Well, heck. I said ‘Look Don, I can’t help him because I’m better qualified than him. You go somewhere else to sell that story.’ Don said ‘It is just a big problem now.’ It would have been because everyone was already assigned to schools. So I said ‘Will you promise me that I will get the next elementary job that opens?” He replied ‘Oh, I can’t do that. I can’t make those kinds of promises. We can’t do that. That’s against the policies and procedures.’ I said ‘It’s against the policies and procedures for you to put that boy out there. He’s not certified.’ Don said ‘Oh well, I can’t do that.’ So I said ‘Let’s go Cheryl.’ So we got up to go and he said ‘What do you want?’ I said ‘I want you to give me the next job that becomes vacant that I want. Don’t put me in a job out in the middle of Lake Michigan so when it thaws, I’ll go under. Don’t do that to me. I don’t want that.’ He said ‘Oh, I never heard of you getting …’ I said ‘And I never heard you ever giving someone a job they weren’t certified for when you have someone else out there who is certified and applied for the job.’ He said he couldn’t do that. So we picked up our purses and told him we would see him in court.” Hafeman had the better part of the night to sleep — or stay up thinking — about his untenable position. He gave Hancock’s attorney a call the next morning. “Don wanted to talk to us,” Hancock said. “We got there and he wanted to know if I would be satisfied with Glenn Stephens. And I said to him ‘I thought you said that you couldn’t do that.’ So he had to move the principal who was there.” Now Hancock was faced with the challenge of becoming the first African American female principal at a virtually all Euro-American elementary school, abruptly replacing a popular — and handsome Hancock added — principal. “I think he thought I wasn’t going to make it over there because it was totally White and they loved the existing principal,” Hancock said. “He was a very handsome guy and they loved him. Don told me he would give me Glenn Stephens. But he didn’t think I was going to make it.” Hafeman did give her a fighting chance. He didn’t make things difficult for her or sabotage her. “He didn’t poison the water for me,” Hancock said. “He took me the night that he introduced me to the school. They had done something unprecedented, giving this guy the job and he wasn’t even certified. They didn’t want me to get on them anymore. He told me he would take me over there and introduce me to the parents. The place was packed. And when Jerry spoke first, he said ‘I never had this many parents come here to any kind of meeting for me. I don’t know what that is saying.’ He went on and said I was a very qualified person and he did what he was supposed to do. When it came time for me to speak, I told them ‘I want to sing that song that Olivia Newton John sang ‘Don’t Get Physical.’ I said ‘Jerry was out getting a suntan all summer long. I wasn’t. I had my suntan. I was out working for you and your children. So if you don’t get physical, I can make it here. Jerry is handsome. He has a beautiful suntan. Well, I have a suntan too.’ They laughed. Then after that, I got into the curriculum. I got into what I know to do. And when I got through that night, they were coming up to me and asking ‘What can we do to help you?’ That was my first night out there. Don was back out there the next week to see how things were going. He was okay.” Hancock not only made it at Glenn Stephens as the principal, she succeeded and the parents and students were rewarded for their faith in Hancock’s abilities. “We worked with those kids and they had the highest reading scores in the state that next year,” Hancock said. “I had parents coming out to that school, White and Black, trying to get into Glenn Stephens because of the staff. The staff was good. I knew what I was doing. I worked with all people. I treated all people alike. I’m not any special person. And at all of the places where I worked were predominantly White. And I had no problems, nothing but praises from them. They put my picture up at Glenn Stephens before I left. And those parents were more than generous. Anthony Brown was a Black parent at Glenn Stephens. Susan and Wayne Canty were both at the dedication. I didn’t have too many Black parents. Black students were five percent of my school, if that much. I let people know that I needed their help. You let the parents know ‘I have to have your help here. I can’t do this without you. You’re a big part of this.’ I made them feel important. I made my parents feel important.” Next issue: Tips on being a successful principal |
| Above: Darlene Hancock with the dedication plaque |
| Top: Tenia Jenkins (l) and Jesse Brown unveil the plaque dedicating the Allen & Darlene Hancock Fellowship Hall |