Walking to School in Edward P. Jones’s “The First Day”

In Edward P. Jones’s “The First Day,” the walk to church passes Seaton Elementary every Sunday. On the first day of school, mother and daughter walk the same streets to Seaton, are turned away and walk on to Walker-Jones. Every stop sat in a 1960 census area at least 88 percent Black.

By Kenton Rambsy

Edward P. Jones shows how a route walked every Sunday made one school a fixture in a family’s life.

In “The First Day,” a mother and her daughter walk every Sunday from their home at 1227 New Jersey Avenue to Mt. Carmel Baptist Church. Seaton Elementary sits across I Street from the church, so they pass it on every trip. For as many Sundays as the daughter can remember, her mother has pointed to Seaton and said, “You gonna go there and learn about the whole world.”

Because mother and daughter walk to school on the first day, Jones can show the neighborhood block by block as the daughter names each street they cross on New Jersey Avenue, from New York Avenue to K Street. At Seaton, a woman says they live “beyond the area that Seaton serves,” and the mother’s “I want her to go here.” The mother chose Seaton from years of walking past it, but the school system goes by address, so she walks her daughter to Walker-Jones, a school that is not across the street from her church.

Every stop on the walk was in Black DC. In 1960 the census areas around the family’s home, Mt. Carmel, Seaton and Walker-Jones were all at least 88 percent Black, when DC as a whole was 54 percent Black. The zone line runs through the family’s own neighborhood, between the school on their Sunday route and the one their address assigns them.

Jones sets a family’s weekly walk against the school system’s map, and on the first day of school the map decides where the daughter goes.

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