Brought music, prestige to school
James “Chief” Wilson was hired at all-black Jones High School in 1950 to teach history, but he was a talented musician and longed to share that love with his students.
Segregated Orange County didn’t make it easy. There was no music department for black students back then, nor any music teachers, Wilson said when he was inducted into the school district’s “hall of fame” in 2015.
“There wasn’t one student who could play any instrument — or even had one,” he said at that ceremony.
But Wilson, who died Dec. 5 at age 90, was determined. He sought help from the community — “We cleared out the pawn shops and our attics” — and worked music lessons and band practice around his regular teaching duties.
Under Wilson’s direction, the Jones High band flourished and eventually band director became his full-time job. He spent almost his entire 40-year career at the Orlando school. The Jones band was invited to play at the World’s Fair in New York in 1964 and in
Washington, D.C. in 1976, for the nation’s bicentennial celebration, among other prestigious events.
Wilson, whose students early on dubbed him “Chief,” taught them to appreciate all types of music, though he insisted they learn classical pieces. He often taught lessons to elementary school students and ran summer band camps to help ensure Jones High had a pipeline of talented musicians. And he always demanded top-notch work.
“We used to have this phrase: Perfect practice makes perfect performance,” said Belvin Perry, a retired Orange County judge who played for Wilson for three years in the late 1960s. “You had to put the time and the effort in. There were no shortcuts.”
“He was encouraging, and he was a father figure for all of our students,” Perry added. “He loved us. He gave us discipline when we needed it. And he would not accept anything but your absolute best.”
Though strict and demanding — music had to be memorized or you didn’t march in Jones High’s band — Wilson was also a caring “kid at heart,” said his daughter Nina Wilson Jones. He kept tabs on all his students, delighted them with rides in his 1930 Model A Ford and loved to decorate his house with a dazzling display of Christmas lights.
Wilson is to be featured in an upcoming documentary, written and produced by University of Central Florida professors and students. The film will tell the story of the trip to the New York World’s Fair, when Orlando’s leaders — in an unusual move in the South in the early 1960s — spearheaded fundraisers to send both Jones’ all-black band and the all-white Edgewater High School band to that national showcase.
Lisa Mills, a UCF film professor and a co-director of the documentary, said the film highlights an interesting moment in Orlando’s history, the long friendship between Wilson and Edgewater’s white band leader but also the importance of black educators like Wilson who worked “to build a bridge to equality” during segregation.
“Behind the scenes of the Civil Rights movement, teachers like Chief were making a huge difference in the lives of their students,” she said.
Wilson grew up in Goldsboro, a historically black community in Sanford, and graduated from Crooms Academy, what was then Seminole County’s all-black high school. His father made a living delivering ice with a horse and buggy.
A music scholarship to what is now Florida A&M University gave him a college education and while in Tallahassee he was an early member of what became the famed Marching 100 band, playing the euphonium, an instrument similar to a small tuba, his daughter said.
Right after graduation, Wilson was hired to teach at Jones High.
His father bought the old Ford for him, so he had a way to drive to work. Wilson kept it going long after he’d purchased newer vehicles. Students loved when he would give them rides home after band practice, and they got to sit on the old car’s rumble seat. The vehicle, his daughter said, still sits in the driveway of her parents’ home in Washington Shores.
Wilson and his wife, Virginia, met at Crooms at age 13, dated through high school and college — she is also a FAMU graduate — and in August celebrated their 65th anniversary.
They had two daughters, both of whom grew up playing the oboe because that was a tough instrument and their father “wanted that part covered,” Jones said, laughing.
Her older sister, Jamia Wilson of Houston, was the more talented musician, she said, but between the two of them, Jones High’s band had an oboist for a decade.
Wilson was a strict and protective father who expected his daughters to work hard and to give back to their communities, she said. He also was eager to show them the country, and he and Virginia took them on several cross-country summer vacations — to the Grand Canyon, among other places — even when, in the years before integration, that meant packing food and water in the car in case the black family couldn’t find a safe place to stop for meals.
Every Christmas, the Wilson home was a brightly lit showstopper that would attract crowds. The Model A was decorated and lit up as part of the display one year. Another time, the family put a revolving Christmas tree in the living room window.
“Daddy’s always been a kid a heart,” she said, and a generous one. ”If neighbors said they couldn’t afford lights,” she added, “Daddy would go buy them lights.”
But his legacy was built on music.
For the documentary, the UCF crew filmed the 2017 “Battle of the Bands” ceremony at Amway Arena, an annual event held ahead of the Florida Classic football game. Wilson was honored that year as the oldest living alumni of the FAMU band.
“Everybody in the arena gave him a standing ovation,” Mills said. “The whole arena roared. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
Jones High’s rebuilt auditorium was named for Wilson in 2004, and it is there that his wife and daughters will hold a public viewing from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday.
Funeral services will be at 11 a.m. Friday at Majestic Life Church,821 S. Kirkman Rd, Orlando.