The Rev. James Steele may be Douglas County’s most avid advocate of education.

Steele taught at Stewart Middle School 16 years before becoming vice principal for four years and principal for the next four years. He then won election as Douglas County’s first black school superintendent, a post he held in 1988 and 1989.

When he lost the next election, he chose to work for DeKalb County schools, where he was assistant principal, principal, a central office coordinator and then assistant director. He kept his home in Douglasville.

Steele was invited to speak to Stewart Middle School students Feb. 2, as part of the Black History Month activities arranged by the Black Educational History Exhibit of Douglasville. He has contributed some of his memorabilia to the exhibit room in the Douglas County Museum of History and Art in the old courthouse on Broad Street.

“John Stewart was my mentor,” Steele said. “The school is named for him. He’d say, ‘Mr. Steele, you need to go back to college and get your degree’” to become an administrator.

Steele and his four siblings all received advanced college degrees, although their parents, a custodian and a maid in Alabama, never went past seventh grade.

“My daddy never made more than minimum wage. My mother never made more than minimum wage,” Steele said. “But they saved. I remember Daddy wearing a shirt with the back out of it, but his coat covered it. They saved money for us to go to college.

“Our parents really were great teachers and great leaders,” he said. “We didn’t realize it at the time. You had to look them in the eye when they talked to you. They made you accountable. We had to tell them what we learned in school that day. When we would go to church on Sunday, we had to walk; and coming back, Daddy would ask my brother, ‘What was the sermon about?’ He would ask the next brother, ‘What was the beginning of the sermon about?’ And so on. So you had to pay attention in church.”

Steele and one brother, Dr. Robert Steele, a Morehouse College alumnus and head of the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, plan to initiate a scholarship at Morehouse on Feb. 19 in honor of their mother and father.

James Steele, a father of five, keeps an active schedule speaking, counseling, mentoring and leading workshops; he was ordained an evangelist and minister in the 1980s at New Mountain Top Baptist Church in Winston.

“My daddy said, ‘Education is for you to become better to help others become better.’”