My Watkins Birth Certificate: A Passport to an Incredible and Wonderful Journey in Life

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted and Published on February 7, 2026

Excerpt from Donald V. Watkins' Birth Certificate.

In 1948, the Douglass School in the “Free State” of Kansas and city of Parsons was widely recognized in White and Black America as the premier public elementary and junior high school for “Colored” students in America. My father, Levi Watkins, was its principal, a position he had held since 1940.

I was born in Parsons on September 8, 1948.  My birth certificate notes that I am the fifth child of Levi and Lillian Watkins, who were 37 and 31 when I was born.  The document has a little-noticed detail that would later serve as my passport to a life that was filled with privilege and enormous community service responsibilities for many decades.  In the section for my father’s occupation, it said: “Principal, Douglass School.”

Growing up in the 1950s and 60s, I had to show my birth certificate to a lot of people for a lot of reasons. Most of those people knew about the Douglass School’s outstanding national academic reputation. They extended special courtesies to me because I was linked to the Douglass School by virtue of my father's work there. Likewise, I had a life-long obligation to uplift all aspects of the community that made the Douglass School great, along with other similarly situated communities across America.

In 1940, the Douglass junior high division was the only accredited four-year separate junior high school in the entire state of Kansas.  In 1946, the Douglas junior high division became the home to Chapter No. 446 of the National Honor Society, commencing with seven honor students.  By 1947, Douglass students outperformed their peers in Parsons’s ten public schools.

Faculty and students of the Douglass School in Parsons, Kansas in 1945.

Throughout our lives, my five siblings and I have amassed hundreds of honors, awards, plaques, trophies, and citations for academic and professional achievements. All of them were deeply appreciated by the recipients and the Watkins family. However, the one document that means more to the Watkins siblings than all the awards combined is the "Standard Certificate of Live Birth” that lists Levi and Lillian Watkins as our parents.

Only six of these birth certificates were ever issued and each Watkins sibling held/holds one of them.  There is no more valuable document in our possession.  It has been our passport to an incredible and wonderful journey in life.