ROCKINGHAM — A longtime leader in education and civil rights in Richmond County has passed away.
It was announced Monday that James Clyde Watkins, known as J.C., died earlier in the morning at Richmond County Hospice Haven.
Watkins was born in 1922 and grew up on a tenant farm in the Beaver Dam Community, graduating high school in 1939.
He was awarded a scholarship to attend Shaw College (now Shaw University), a historically black private college in Raleigh.
Watkins returned home to Richmond County in 1943 to teach at what later became Leak Street School. It was there he met his future wife, Ruth Perry, who taught French and social studies. The two were married in August of 1946 at Calvary Baptist Church in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Watkins continued his own education, earning a master’s degree from Columbia University and an educational specialist degree from Appalachian State University.
He spent 41 years as an educator, working his way to principal and assistant superintendent before retiring in 1984.
Watkins was also involved with politics and early on helped a young Henry Frye register to vote. Frye went on to become the first African American elected to the state House of Representatives in the 20th century and as a N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice.
Watkins himself became the first African American elected to the Rockingham City Council in 1973 and was the second, behind Maceo McEachern, to be elected to the Richmond County Board of Commissioners since Reconstruction. He served as a councilman from 1973-1990 and as a commissioner from 1990-2008.
Watkins also was involved with a number of community boards and organizations including: the Richmond County Board of Health; the NAACP; Richmond Memorial Hospital Board of Directors; Rockingham Recreation Foundation Board of Directors; Rockingham Rotary Club; Boy Scouts of America; chairman of Lumber River Council of Governments; chairman of Richmond County Martin Luther King Celebration Committee; North Carolina Black Elected Officials Board of Directors; voting delegate for Richmond County at N.C. Association of County Commissioners annual conferences and at National Association of Counties annual conferences; and member of the Board of Deacons of Mount Zion United Church of Christ.
Watkins’ service to the community was recognized in 2008 as Nov. 13 was declared J.C. Watkins Day by the Richmond County Board of Commissioners.
The proclamation noted, in part, that “the early years of his career took place during a racially-divided time during which J. C. Watkins took this opportunity to promote racial harmony and goodwill, while instilling in young people the values of hard work (,) achievement, and a positive attitude…”
“… it is an understatement to say that J. C. Watkins personifies the true meaning of a public servant by giving unselfishly of his time and of his talents during his lengthy and commendable career as an educator and an elected official. J. C. Watkins has been described by others as having earned the respect of his students and his peers with quiet dignity.”
In 2019, the Leak Street Education and Cultural Center was renamed in honor of Watkins and his wife. Earlier, in 1997, the couple was honored jointly as Richmond County Citizens of the Year.
Ruth Watkins died in February 2021.
J.C. Watkins would have turned 101 in March.
Click here to read the Black History Month post from Richmond County Tourism in 2022.
See the 2008 resolution below.
