Jewitt White

Jewitt White and fellow B-1 vet Simeon Holloway both graduated from Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, in 1939. White went on to study agriculture at A and T while Holloway stayed at home to work in the steel mills to earn money for attending North Carolina College in Durham.

After the war, White graduated from A and T and then earned his Master’s in agricultural education from Iowa State. He taught for a couple of years at Clinton and then enrolled in a PhD program at Penn State. He left there AbD after having become certified as having a doctorate in the state of Indiana, where he helped establish the Gary Career Center. He was subsequently hired by Gary Schools to take over its fledgling industrial education program, becoming its second director and the first African American to direct a public schools program in the state of Indiana. He directed the center for 20 years. At the time, the center worked primarily with the area steel mills; today it enrolls students from six Gary high schools and three surrounding school districts as high school juniors and seniors.