Allan Appel Photo
The honoree (center) with family members Sean Hardy, Deana Mallory, and Byron Breeland.
She was a classmate of Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court; she was a member of the first Black troop of Girl Scouts in the United States; she became a major promoter of gospel choruses in the New Haven area; and her family founded the venerable Pitts Chapel United Free Will Baptist Church in Newhallville.
That’s why 103-year-old Mary Etta Atkinson Joyner, graduate of the class of 1939, was hailed not only as the embodiment of James Hillhouse High School history, but of New Haven and national history as well.
“We are a site of history ourselves,” declared Principal Antoine Billy.
The loving encomiums flowed Friday afternoon at Hillhouse High School’s Black History Month celebration, where about 900 spirited students, nearly the school’s full student body, filled the auditorium.
They enjoyed performances by the school’s talented musicians and dancers and whooped and hollered in praise of “Mother Joyner” and the event’s other two honorees, Alethia Moore and Aaron Rogers.
Alethia Moore, class of 2015
These two, a bit younger, were also already impressive in their achievements. Yet if they follow Joyner’s longevity advice — no smoking, no drinking, stay involved in your church and in education and don’t forget to get an early jump toward your goal — they will have 70 or 80 or so years to accomplish even more:
Alethia Moore was an Academics’ track star from the class of 2015. She still holds the Hillhouse High School record for the 55-meter dash at a blistering 7.14 seconds. She earned a full scholarship to college and when she graduated, at the urging of a mentor, took the exam to join the New Haven Police Department, where she now serves as a school resource officer.
Aaron Rogers, class of 2006, is a successful music producer and entrepreneur who is the founder and lead organizer of the city’s annual Black Wall Street festival. It’s set to return to the Green, he reported, this Aug. 16.
“Ask yourselves,” Principal Antoine Billy challenged his audience, “‘What am I doing not just today but every day to honor Black History Month?’”
After Joyner, in brief remarks, charged the students to “learn as much as you can,” Assistant Principal Jonathan Berryman, the chief organizer of the day’s celebration, offered some of rime’s perspective on how to achieve that: “If you were born in 2007,” he said, “and live as long as she has, that year will be 2110!”
Joyner also said that planning and knowing what you want and starting early to achieve it is a rule she’s followed her whole long and productive life in church service and in service to her children and to education. At age 14 she had become the secretary in her church and she became the first Black woman to head the PTA at the Troup School.
For her public contributions along with the behind-the-scenes family-to-family philanthropy over the years, the corner of Newhall and Huntington Street was named in Joyner’s honor two years ago.
Aaron Rogers, class of 2006.
Rogers, a graduate of the Berkeley College of Music, struck a similar note in describing the road he’d traveled to become, with his business partner Rashad Johnson, a Grammy Award winner and in creating the music production company Breed Entertainment: “Go for your dreams while you’re young. Believe in yourself, and put in the work.”
Principal Billy reminded his students that James Hillhouse High School, the first public high school in New Haven, was founded before the Civil War, back in 1859, or 166 years ago. (That, for the mystical numerologists among you, is almost exactly the number you get if you add up the total number of years of the three honorees!)
“There was a time,” Billy concluded, “when Black Americans did not have a school like this … and when you couldn’t sit in the front of the bus. Honor Black history by taking your education seriously. Honor the day you turn 18, and register to vote.”
Joyner said she heartily endorses Black History Month. As it was formalized in 1976 by President Gerald Ford, Joyner said there was no such event or anything similar to it when she was a student at Hillhouse, in the late 1930s.
National Black History Month has origins, however, that go to 1915, when Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He initiated something called Negro History Week back in 1926, when Mary Etta Atkinson Joyner would have been five years old.