A Window Into the Past: The Alabama State College Laboratory School Produced Students Who Changed the World in Profound and Lasting Ways
- Donald V. Watkins
- Apr 22
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on April 22, 2025
An Editorial Opinion
My high school classmate and lifelong friend, Alonza Gamble, sent me a copy of our Alabama State College Laboratory School “Gopher” Yearbook for 1966. I had not seen the yearbook since we graduated from Lab High in May 1966. Today, it is a window into my past.
Click here to view the 16-page Yearbook. When you do, you will enter the world as I knew it in 1966. The yearbook staff in 1966 is pictured below. They were young, gifted, and so talented.
The Laboratory School was an Unparalleled Success in Ediucational Excellence.
I have often written about my remarkable experience in this small all-black school during Gov. George C. Wallace's heyday and the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery, Alabama. The Laboratory School was an unparalleled success in education excellence.
The school had only one class of about 30 students for each grade. What the school lacked in size and financial resources, it made up for in the heart, intellectual acumen, dignity, and high moral fiber of its teachers and students.
The educational preparation we received at the Laboratory School was intense, practical, and very forward-looking. These teachers produced an academic “dream team” every year. We never felt inferior to any ethnic group or competitor.
The overt racism in Alabama at the time was never viewed as an acceptable excuse for failing to reach our goals in life. We were taught to treat racism like turbulent weather. It was real and pervasive, but we were trained to find a way around, under, over, or through racism to reach our destination in life.
Our dedicated and caring teachers, together with our loving parents, synchronized our developing minds, growing bodies, and unconquerable spirit. They prepared us to become agents for the positive changes we sought in the world.
When you look at the faces of Principal Moses Clark and our teachers in the 1966 Gopher Yearbook, you are looking at the faces of greatness in education.
We learned Latin, French and Spanish before we could drink from “Whites-Only” water fountains. We learned how to communicate orally and in writing from the best English teachers in America. Our math and science teachers contributed greatly to the success of those students whose algorithms would later transform the global telecommunications and information technology industries. Our biology teachers produced the best doctors in America.
We learned the countries and cultures of the world from brilliant geography teachers who rarely traveled beyond the state of Alabama. We were constantly reminded that the world is connected by common cultural values and a history of human exploration.
By the time we graduated from the Laboratory School, these teachers had molded our will to win and had given us all of the confidence we needed to achieve success against all odds. We were unstoppable in our quest to succeed in life.
The Laboratory School had a 100% graduation rate throughout its 49-year history, and every student progressed to a post-secondary education. The students who graduated from this small Montgomery school produced a favorably and lasting impact in every aspect of American society, including law, medicine, engineering, civil and criminal justice, science and technology, mathematics, education, business and finance, aerospace, energy, diplomatic services, and international relations.
No K-12 school in America today has matched the cumulative achievements and positive impact on the world that the graduates of the Alabama State College Laboratory School accomplished throughout their careers.
Looking back on it today, our teachers were visionaries and unsung heroes. What they achieved in the field of education with limited segregation-era resources and unlimited creative genius was nothing short of a miracle.
The Laboratory School is now featured in the University of South Carolina of Museum of Education. The school was also recognized by the Alabama Department of Archives and History in "Laboratory of Learning: Alabama State College Lab High School, a Model Education," presented by Sharon Gay Pierson at the Department's Farley Auditorium on September 17, 2015. Dr. Pierson also published a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University about the Laboratory School in 2012 titled, "A 'Laboratory of Learning': A Case Study of Alabama State College Laboratory High School in Historical Context, 1920-1960."
Here is the National Honor Society at Lab High during the 1964-65 school year. Everybody in this photo was off-the-chart smart. My first girlfriend is also in this photo. Her name was Anne Young.
My girlfriend during my senior year at Lab High was sophmore student Natalie Lehman. She is pictured on page 5 of the yearbook. I wrote about the Lehman family here: https://www.donaldwatkins.com/post/lt-colonel-paul-david-lehman-jr-an-american-military-hero-1
Black education and Black unity was superior prior to integration. Just saying.
It ceased to amazed me each time I discovered historic moments related to black people accomplishments. Montgomery Alabama seems to be the battleground for black achievements dating back to Reverend Vernon Johns, Mrs. Rosa Parks and countless numbers of others whose listing is too vast to introduce.
Dr. John Thomas Gibson is one of those freedom fighters single handedly who took up a case that would later end segragation in higher education in Alabama. Most importantly, he solicited the help of a close friend, fellow Montgomerian, Donald V. Watkins, attorney, is widely known for his legal expertise in civil rights across America.
Trailblazers like Dr. Gibson inspires me to make the important leaps in life.
One of those original plaintiffs in the 1981 Knight v. Alabama case was Dr. John Thomas Gibson, my high school classmate. John’s wife Voncile was also my high school classmate. I was the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in this higher education desegregation case.
John has always been super-smart and was born with a backbone of steel. Voncile was John's staunch supporter in the fight for equitable funding and program offerings when John worked as an administrator at Alabama State in the 1980s and early 1990s and when he served as Alabama A&M University’s president from 1996 to 2005.
John’s demonstrated courage as an original plaintiff in the Knight v. Alabama litigation is one of the primary reasons why Alabama…