The dedication of the Allen & Darlene Hancock Fellowship Hall
Community Organizers
Community Organizers
By Jonathan Gramling Part 3 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. 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. While Hancock had to fight for the position and replaced a popular principal at the school, she had a successful run as principal at the school until she retired, beloved by students, parents and staff alike. Hancock was a caring, yet strongwilled administrator who believed in getting everyone involved in the educational process and refused to take no for an answer. “I didn’t have any parent who didn’t come to school because I would go after them,” Hancock said. “But this particular parent lived across the street from the school and wouldn’t come to school. So I told the little boy ‘If your mother doesn’t come to school, I’m going to go over there to see her.’ And he said ‘I’ll tell her, but my momma’s not gonna come to school. She’s not gonna come.’ I went over there to her house, sat down and told her ‘I just can’t understand why you won’t come to help me help your child. I have to have your help. And I know you want your child to be successful. Don’t you?’ She replied ‘Oh, yes ma’am, I do.’ I said ‘Okay then, what are you going to do?’ She said ‘You know what? My parents never went to school when I was little.’ I then told her that she didn’t want her child growing up feeling that she didn’t do it. I told her she was doing it to her child and that I was going to see her at the school’s next meeting. She was there. So you really have to make an effort.” As the principal, Hancock was the ‘coach’ of the team and found roles for everyone to play in the education of the children at Glenn Stephens. “There were the women out there — these were White upper class women — who had been dominated by their husbands and I gave them something to do and made them feel important at the school,” Hancock recalled. “They would turn mountains for me. You have to facilitate other people’s efforts. You have to make people feel that they are needed. And you have to show them what they have to offer.” And while for some school administrators, parental involvement is just a term, Hancock was creative in making sure that parents came to the school and that everyone else knew it. “We would do games with kids,” Hancock said. “We would put footprints and each child would give their parent a footprint. And the parent would leave the footprint at school when they came, so we would know who came. You can just think of all kinds of little things to connect the child and the parent. You have to do that. I had fun doing it.” Hancock also deeply believed in her staff and used a bit of creativity to ensure that all of her teachers — no matter what their cultural background — would have an understanding of the context within which many African American students have grown up in, particularly those who may have moved to Madison from the Chicago area, and have a rudimentary understanding of African American History. For one particular in-service training for her staff, Hancock hired a Greyhound Bus and took her staff down to Chicago to get a taste of the African American experience. “We had breakfast down in the ghetto,” Hancock remembered. “It was a real nice restaurant. They stuck with me. Then we were looking at different places there. I had one Black teacher on my staff. If they had gone on their own to visit those places, they wouldn’t have gone where we went because they would have been afraid. Who couldn’t get over it was the bus driver. It was a White bus driver. He kept looking back at the guy who was going with us — he was a detective — and said ‘Do you want me to keep going?’” Next she took them to the DuSable Museum of African American History. “They were just oohing and awing,” Hancock said. “They didn’t have the foggiest idea of what Black History was all about. You probably don’t know that the ironing board was invented by a Black man. The stop light was invented by a Black man. There were so many inventions like that they were not aware of. They loved the museum. That did change the tide. They could see that Blacks have made a lot of contributions, but we just don’t give it out. We hold it. We just need to let everyone know what everyone has done.” Their trip ended up at Oprah Winfrey’s restaurant on the north side of Chicago. “It was fabulous,” Hancock exclaimed. “So we went from the ghettos to uptown and it was all Black. It was a big statement.” It opened her teachers’ minds to a broader, more complex African American experience that they had never before experienced inside or outside the classroom. Hancock was proud of her teachers. “My staff never bucked anything I said ‘Let’s do,’” Hancock said. “They said ‘If you want us to do it, we’ll do it.’ It is important for a principal to have a vision that others can see and buy into.” What stands out when listening to Hancock talk about education is the importance of relationships and rapport in working with students and parents alike. Hancock was going to engage everyone in positive actions for the benefit of the students’ education. Hancock is relatively small in stature. And while she might have felt intimidated in some situations, it appears her motto must have been ‘Never let them see you sweat.’ “There are teachers who are intimidated by some of the kids,” Hancock said. “And when the kid knows that, they are going to put it on right. I don’t care if I am afraid of that kid, I would never let that kid know it. Once they think you are intimidated by them, they are going to walk all over you. You have to stand up to that kid. Kids don’t really want to be bad. They just turned out that way. We have allowed them to just keep going, keep going and keep going with them because nobody did stand up to them.” Early on, in Hancock’s estimation, teachers have to positively engage the students before their behavior gets to crisis proportions. “Kids must see something and get involved with you as the teacher,” Hancock said. “You can’t let them run wild. He’s not going to learn if you do not get him involved in that lesson, no matter what it is. But you start off early in getting that kid involved in kindergarten or before in activities that will lead them to learning skills. The teachers must understand the child. The teacher must understand what the child knows and what the child does not know and what the child can do and what the child cannot do. Then you start from there.” And the key to engaging students, in Hancock’s estimation, is engaging the parents. “To close the achievement gap, you’re going to have to work with parents,” Hancock reflected. “The parents have to be worked with because a lot of them don’t know what to do. You have to work with the parents and tell them they have to go to schools. You have to tell parents ‘Look your child has to do this, that and the other. Do you want your child to learn?’ You really have to get down to the nitty with those parents. ‘Do you want your child to learn? Okay, then what do you think should happen?’ The parents are going to tell you 2-3 things. And you take one of the things they said and you make them think that’s the last word, but you add all of the other things to it that you want to. I would challenge my parents. ‘This is your child! This child is just going to be in this school for 3-4 years, but I want to help you help your child. And I want you to help me to help your child. And what do you think you can do to help me?’” And speaking of involvement, now that she has returned to town, Hancock has gotten involved again with S.S. Morris Community Church and the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority — two of the organizations she helped establish many years ago. Even in retirement, it’s hard to keep a natural community organizer on the sidelines. It’s doubtful that Hancock will ever retire from serving her community. |
| Above: Darlene Hancock with the dedication plaque |