At the kitchen table with Dr. Willa Cofield - Part one

Dr. Willa Cofield, an educator and civil rights activist, sits in her kitchen at home in Plainfield, reading her memoir, The Nine O’Clock Whistle, published by the University Press of Mississippi. Hellie Denman | Public Square Amplified

Dr. Willa Cofield describes Enfield, the North Carolina town where she was born and raised, as a close-knit community shaped by familial ties, shared cultural norms, a spirit of entrepreneurship, and the Black church as its anchor.

In keeping with the small-town vibe, it seemed fitting to conduct our interview at Cofield’s kitchen table. With sunlight streaming through the windows, we sipped peppermint tea and discussed her book, The Nine O’Clock Whistle — co-written with two of her former Inborden High School students — which chronicles her unwavering fight for Black liberation.

“I decided to write this book because the history of the civil rights movement in Enfield, North Carolina, had been overlooked by almost everyone, and I felt that it was significant,” said Cofield, who undertook this project in her mid-nineties. “It was Black history. It needed to be recorded.

“I am so surprised at the timing of the publication of this book. I never dreamed it would be so timely — that what people did while facing terrible circumstances 60 years ago would be relevant today.”

Now 96, Cofield reflects on a lifetime of activism that began in her youth, inspired by her family’s commitment to education and the pursuit of equality for Black people. She emphasizes the enduring importance of community organizing, coalition-building, education, and resilience — drawing parallels between past and present voter suppression tactics and the ongoing need for activism.

Public Square Amplified sat down with Cofield to learn more about how she fought for civil rights, and how present-day advocates can learn from her strategies and be inspired by her quiet ferocity. 

PUBLIC SQ: You were 8 years old in 1936 when your father invited a white union representative to speak to a Black congregation at a church in Enfield, but before he could begin the police arrived and effectively shut down the meeting. Later, we learn that the union representative intended to discuss voter registration.

Did that incident plant the seed for your activism later in life? 

COFIELD: I think that incident really impressed me. I didn't understand the full significance of it, but I never forgot it. After the meeting was shut down my father took us in the car, and we all drove 36 miles to Wilson, and I remember sitting in the car with my mother and my sisters while my father stayed in the house - it seemed a long time to me, and when we got back home, it was night, so I never forgot it. Later on, in the 60s, when we were talking about voter registration, it came back to me that this isn't the first time that people in this community have been discouraged from registering to vote. 

PUBLIC SQ: Your passion for activism resurfaced during your high school years (1940 to 1944).

Can you share more details about the pageant you helped to produce for your high school commencement? Specifically, what inspired you to create it, what message did you want to convey?

COFIELD: Our principal and English teacher, who was our class sponsor, had suggested to us that instead of having a speaker come in, that we might want to do a pageant, that was something that people were doing at that time, and they gave us a book to look at to see an example. There was a pageant called  Ethiopia at the Bar of Justice and they said, maybe you might want to do something along this line. So we decided to do three skits that would focus on segregation in the army, employment, and transportation. 

At that time, Black people sat at the back of the bus. There were few jobs available for Black people other than working on farms, and in the military, the units were segregated into white and Black. So, we tried to set the stage to represent those areas.

The audience liked it but the superintendent of schools, who was the only white person in the audience, did not like it, and he walked to the front of the auditorium, his face red, and asked who is responsible for this? And nobody said anything. You could hear a pin drop. And then finally, our English teacher rose and said, the children wanted to do it, and I supported them. And so Mr. Johnson, the superintendent, said, well, let's give them a big hand. 

And so it turned out okay, but we were afraid. Nobody wanted to say that the principal and the teacher had come in and suggested it, but you know, that was typical of our classes. We were an all Black school, and so we talked about segregation and racism. We didn't call it racism, but we talked about segregation and discrimination a lot in our classes, very often in class discussion after a lecture or whatever, we would talk about the environment that we lived in.

PUBLIC SQ: As an adult, you taught English to high school students and was married to Reed Johnson, who ran for Enfield commissioner. You collaborated with your students to register Black residents to vote in Halifax county.

Please tell us about your voter registration efforts.

COFIELD: Only 15% of the Halifax Black population was registered to vote. But we had gone through the summer of 1963, and we (the Black residents of Enfield) had a big confrontation with the police in downtown Enfield, which was followed by a 90-day boycott.

We knew that something might happen to those teachers who were associated with the voter registration movement, but as an outcome of the things that happened in Enfield, we organized the Halifax County Voter’s Movement. 

The movement spilled over from our little town and encompassed much of Halifax County, and that was done with the help of outside people like John Salter Jr. - aka Hunter Gray - who was a sociology professor at Tougaloo College in Jackson Mississippi. He had sat at lunch counters with Black students trying to desegregate restaurants and had worked with Medgar Evers. He came up under the auspices of the group the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF).

PUBLIC SQ: How did intimidation play out at polling sites?

COFIELD: The voter registration campaign was an effort to organize the whole county, and there were only three Saturdays that people could register in May. And so we had to try to get people to the polls during the hours that the poll was open.

What the county registrars did was to take a long time with each person who went in to register. You had to be able to read a part of the Constitution and write it in order to register. And so there was this slowdown, and a lot of people left. Some people stood almost all day waiting to get in. 

So the lawyers had to come in, take affidavits from people and go into court to get the judges to issue an injunction against the county to stop the slowdown. So then the registrars, instead of following the orders of the judge in good faith, they started going as fast as they could. So they had to go back into court, and there's only a month now to register people, but still, we came out of it with 2200 people who were registered, which was pretty good. 

Also, the people living on farms owned by white farmers were told, if you want to live here, you don't go down there and get involved in any of that stuff.

PUBLIC SQ: Tell us about the personal challenges your family faced while getting out the Black vote in Halifax County. 

COFIELD: When my husband filed to run for town Commissioner we were visited by the Ku Klux Klan. This was a warning to him that he had gotten out of his place. And we received telephone calls too, saying, if  you don't withdraw from the from the race, we are going to burn your house down. So that was the first visit. 

The second visit came much later in the whole experience, when I filed a federal lawsuit on July 4, 1964 against 14 people on the school board and the town government. It was in the newspapers, and that evening, a 17’ cross was burned across the street from our house. So that was a clear response to my boldness, I guess, in challenging my firing.

PUBLIC SQ: It’s 2025 and we are still struggling with getting people registered to vote and for making sure that when they are registered they can safely go to the polls and cast their ballots.

What are your thoughts about voting today?

COFIELD: Well, I don't think it's as blatant today as it once was, but the desire and the urge to discourage voter registration is still with us. These regulations and laws — such as the one prohibiting giving water to people waiting in line — are designed to deter those trying to register.

In fact, my nephew told me he went to register to vote in Atlanta, he couldn't get near the polling place. He had to park far away from the polling location. It was roped off because, you know, they just are doing things to discourage people from participating, not to mention the gerrymandering that's taken place throughout the South. They've tried to draw the lines so that it would be impossible for people of color to get a majority.  If you have a felony, then you can't register in many places. So that's another way. 

PUBLIC SQ: Tell us about the federal lawsuit you brought against 14 people on the Enfield school board and the town government. 

COFIELD: North Carolina and most southern states at that time had changed their teacher employment laws so that they didn't have to fire you. They just gave you a contract for one year. So, when my principal went to pick up my contract, there was no contract for me. That was one of the strategies used to discourage teacher activism and so that schools would stay out of the political arena. 

Initially, the Eastern District Court sided against Cofield, but upon appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court, the decision was overturned. The case ended in a victory for Cofield (then Johnson) and resulted in legislation that affirmed teachers' First Amendment rights to be politically active. 

The case was significant because it established teachers' constitutional right to take political positions, reportedly saved the jobs of hundreds of teachers across the South, resulted in Cofield receiving $10,000 in damages and attorney fees and sent a message to school districts about retaliating against politically active teachers.

Johnson v. Branch (1966) was a landmark case in protecting educators' rights to civic engagement during the Civil Rights era.

“In 1964, I was fired from my teaching job. Somehow, I found the courage to sue 14 officials in that county,” Cofield said recalling her landmark suit, Johnson v. Branch. ”It was a hard trial. It was a hard effort, but I won.

“If I could do that, then I think somehow we can find ways to think, to strategize, to find ways to counter, to turn this thing around, and to see that the forces of evil that are threatening to take over — that we find a way to stop them.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview with Dr. Willa Cofield, where we explore the effects of migration and reverse migration on Black communities and discuss how modern-day color lines are being drawn through the removal of DEI initiatives, book bans, the distortion of Black history, and the trend toward defunding education.