East Tennessee Black Schools Closing 50th Anniversary: And the Reunion of the Ages in August!

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A few key things were happening during the Civil Rights Movement in 1965.

African-Americans marched for the right to vote.  Their hearts were in it, but their community was not.

Black met white on a four-lane bridge in Selma, Alabama, and although the blood was red that flowed that March day 50 years ago, African-Americans did get the constitutional right to vote.

Almost 450 miles to the northeast, integration meant the end of African-American schools in upper East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.  It meant the end of segregation, but it also spelled the end of close relationships between black teachers and black students and the relationships those schools had with each other.

It was the end of the Bland High School in Big Stone Gap, Virginia.... Douglass High School in Bristol, Virginia.... Slater High School in Bristol, Tennessee.... Douglass High School in Kingsport, Tennessee.... Langston High School and the associated elementary schools in Johnson City, Tennessee.... Douglas High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee... Booker T. Washington Elementary School in Jonesborough, Tennessee....  George Clem High School in Greeneville, Tennessee.... Swift High School in Rogersville, Tennessee.... Morristown College High School in Morristown, Tennessee.... and Tanner High School in Newport, Tennessee.

The closings ripped the heart out of the African-American communities in those cities.

The void was filled by reunions held every two years between the individual black school alumni associations.  Alumni of the schools came from miles around to get together and reminisce about "the good ole days" and catch up with each other's lives.

But there has always been one resounding message at all of the reunions.

Wouldn't it be beautiful to have one big, giant reunion between all of the former African-American high schools in Upper East Tennessee?  A chance to relive some of the old rivalries, yet celebrate the wonderful friendships and kindred spirits that hundreds of students all shared back in the day.

THE CHANCE TO DO THAT IS.... NOW!

The summer of 2015 will be the 50th anniversary of the closing of most of the African-American schools, from Knoxville to Bristol... from Newport to Big Stone.

Efforts are now underway to plan for that huge reunion in late August.  The date has been set for SATURDAY, AUGUST 29TH, the location to be announced.

The first planning meeting between members from some of the former schools' alumni associations was very productive.  Efforts are underway to contact other associations, to also get them involved in the planning process, with the ultimate goal... TO SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THE UPCOMING BIG REUNION IN LATE AUGUST!

"I value the future and the need for people to know where we came from," says Vivian Releford, president of the Douglass Alumni Association, Bristol, VA.  "As a people, we have lost our self-esteem.  Our kids don't know how to stand up and be proud of who they are.  We have not done a good job of teaching them to be proud of their heritage, which includes the education that their ancestors received."

"That's why this big reunion is so important."

"Coming back together to share memories of what we went through back then, is a wonderful idea," said Sue Greenlee Gilispie of the Booker T. Washington Elementary School Alumni Association in Jonesborough.  "All of our teachers at the schools had cherished personal relationships with their students... we all shared that.  This reunion will reinforce that training with the alumni that are left, plus shed some light on what our young people need, as they prepare their own histories."

"I was in the last class at Slater," remembered Lawrence Bell, Jr., president of the Slater High School Alumni Association in Bristol, VA.  "We love our reunions, and we also love the friendships that we forged with other schools through athletic and academic competitions.  The social interaction was undeniably strong.  Integration was great....I don't want to go back.  At the same time, it was hurtful in a lot of ways.  This big reunion is a good thing, to reminisce and fellowship with people we all have something in common with.  It will show our communities that we survived.... we endured.... we perserved.... WE MADE IT WORK."

"We all have a story," relayed Mary Alexander with the Langston Heritage Group of Johnson City.  "Our stories are all interwoven with each other.  Through this big reunion, we need to let people know that our stories are important to our communities.  If we don't tell those stories, they die with us.  When we get together for this reunion, those stories live on.... when we tell those stories to our young people, they will know how special our histories are... how they are part of those histories."

"I see a Tri-State history," she went on.  "It just blows my mind, the potential of a reunion like this.  I think this is so exciting.  We've got something to show off.  It's our histories, our collective histories.  Everybody needs to be a part of this.  I just can't wait.  I love it, LOVE IT.  We are important!  We matter.  OUR HISTORIES MATTER!"

"My grandson came in the other day," remembers Brenda Akins Charles, also with the Langston Heritage Group, "and he says 'Me-me... did you have white friends back then?'  I said, 'of course, I had white friends.  I guess he was expecting me to say 'no.'  This is why the idea of a big reunion is important.  What must other young people think about our history?  This is a chance to show the young people what we did, how we did it, and why it's important to them."

"50 years is an anniversary worth celebrating," said Doug Releford, president of the Sons and Daughters of Douglass Alumni Association in Kingsport.  "Our numbers are dropping fast.  Our past is going away just as fast.  If 50 years of celebrating voting rights is important down in Selma, Alabama for the country, remembering our black schools that closed 50 years ago, is also important to us here in our corner of the world."

"My dream has always been to have a big reunion like this," says Barbara Love-Watterson with Langston.  "Doug Releford can back me up on this.. we tried to get the idea of a big reunion going, but it never got off the ground.  Then I spoke to Calvin and he got excited, which made me excited about it again.  Our children have lost their heritage.. they don't know who they are or where they came from, they don't know their backgrounds.  Nobody teaches the importance of family histories in school, so we have to do that job ourselves."

"This big reunion is the first step in doing that."

Jeanette Clark from the Douglas Alumni Association in Elizabethton sees the Big Reunion as bringing together old friends and reinforcing the black communities the alumni all represent.  "By discussing and remembering what our heritages are about, it's a reaffirmation of our values.  Although we have our individual reunions, our children don't seem interested.  It'd be hard to ignore a reunion of this magnitude."

"This reunion takes us to the next level," she says.  "It re-ignites the soul.. it fires us up.  The communities we live in, will see how important this is to us, and they will want to take part.  Our young people will want to join in, because they'll see how important it is to us.  The extra items is, they will see how important it is to THEM.  There's no way to ignore it."

"This big reunion is necessary," the group collectively agreed.

The group went ahead and set a date for the gathering.  It will be Saturday, August 29th, with an alternate date of Saturday, September 12th.  The thought, group members decided, would be a central location easy for people to get to, that has adequate overnight lodging if folks need that.  Specific events that day, will also be decided later, with the thoughts ranging from active displays from each school of academic competitions, to notable speakers from the era.

Discussed locations include places that both allow liquor and those that do not.  They include the banquet room at the United Methodist Church in Blountville, the assembly area at Northeast State, Meadowview Conference Center in Kingsport, the Doubletree Hotel in Johnson City, Freedom Hall and the Millineum Center both in Johnson City.  Ms. Clark pointed out that the event is about unity, not about where it is.. that "we're coming together as a people to fellowship, to reunion and to celebrate our previous pasts.  The Big Reunion itself is the motivating factor for attending, not where it's being held.   Mary Alexander volunteered to scout out several locations and report back to the group's next meeting.

At the close of this first meeting, Calvin Sneed of the Sons and Daughters of Douglass Alumni Association, Kingsport, reminded the group of its charge.... to take the enthusiasm from the group and spread it among their various alumni association members to get people to attend, and to also contact and encourage the boards of other black school alumni associations to attend the Reunion organizational meetings, so that everybody will have a voice.  Sneed said the focus of the group is "not what we cannot do, but what we CAN do.  Any suggestion is workable and everybody's ideas count."

NEXT MEETING OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL GROUP:  SATURDAY, APRIL 11TH, AT 11 A.M., AT THE CARVER RECREATION CENTER, 322 WATAUGA AVENUE, JOHNSON CITY, TN.  

CONTACT ANY OF THE ABOVE GROUP MEMBERS, OR CALVIN SNEED AT DOUGLASSRIVERVIEW@GMAIL.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION.

PBS tells story of Rogersville’s Swift College

THIS STORY COURTESY THE KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS

By JEFF BOBO

jbobo@timesnews.net

 

ROGERSVILLE — It’s been 60 years since Swift College closed, and more than 50 years since the main facility, which was converted into a segregated high school until 1964, was demolished.

The youngest surviving graduates of Rogersville’s former all-African American college are well into their 80s, and many of the high school’s last graduating class will turn 70 this year.

That’s why Class of 1960 Swift High School alumna Stella Gudger was so adamant that the surviving Swift graduates have a chance to tell their stories.

Today, Gudger is curator of the Swift College Museum, located within the Price Public Community Center, near where the Swift campus was located.

For the past year, filmmaker William Isom II has been interviewing former Swift students, scanning their old photos and compiling their stories, the product of which will be broadcast on East Tennessee PBS on Saturday, Feb. 28 at noon.  The TV station is WETP-TV, Channel 2 serving the Tri-Cities (outside of the Tri-Cities, consult your local PBS listings for date and time).

“The Swift Story” — produced and directed by Isom — focuses on the history of Swift College, its students and their experiences in a segregated, all-black college in the South for more than 70 years.

“We started this a year ago because, frankly, all of these people who attended Swift are dying off,” Gudger said. “We needed to compile these stories before it’s too late and make sure these stories are preserved for future generations.”

Aside from airing on PBS, “The Swift Story” will also be played on a loop at the museum for visitors, particularly the school field trip classes that come to the museum.

Today the musuem is a community center, but for decades, Price Public School was Rogersville’s all-black K-12 school located across Hasson Street from the Swift campus.

“When students come to the museum, a lot of them are surprised by what they learn here,” Gudger said. “What surprised me was that a lot of people in our own community don’t know about Swift and the important role it played in the history of Rogersville.”

In 1883, the first African-American graduate of Maryville College, the Rev. William H. Franklin, established an institution of higher learning for newly emancipated blacks.  Isom said Swift Memorial Institute in Rogersville became a beacon of higher education in the rural South.

“The untold story of Swift Memorial Institute provides a more intricate and well-rounded view of East Tennessee’s historic narrative,” Isom said. “When we preserve, restore, and celebrate knowledge of the cultural and economic contributions made by members of the black community in East Tennessee, we change the narrative and help foster more positive, just and equitable interactions between the diverse groups of people for whom East Tennessee is home.”

“The Swift Story” is told through newly discovered photographs, letters and documents, as well as interviews with Gudger; Lester Layman, author of “Blacks in Tennessee”; Dr. Bobby Lovett, author of “America’s Historically Black Colleges: A Narrative History 1837-2009”; Dr. Tom Bogart, president of Maryville College; as well as Swift alumni and Rogersville residents.

Ten years after the school’s founding, the academy’s first structure was actualized and named in honor of the Rev. Elijah E. Swift, president of the Board of Missions for Freedmen and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Pennsylvania.

In 1901, because the state’s legislative body enacted a statute that closed Maryville College’s doors to African Americans, the school’s board of trustees voted to convey $25,000 of its endowment to Swift Memorial Institute.

Under President Franklin’s leadership, the school experienced growth and prosperity.

Franklin retired at the end of the 1926 academic year, and he was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. C.E. Tucker, pastor of the Leonard Street Presbyterian Church in Chattanooga.

During the next decade, Swift Memorial College became Swift Memorial Junior College. As a junior college, the school flourished and continued its mission of providing an education to students from Tennessee and other southern states.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the National Board of Missions began reassessing the feasibility of operating the 20 schools located in the South and in 1952 discontinued its support for Swift.

In 1955, Swift Memorial Junior College closed. The boys’ dormitory was used by the Hawkins County Board of Education as a segregated public high school until 1964, when Hawkins County schools were desegregated.

Today, the old Swift campus is owned by Hawkins County Schools, and the college president’s home is used as the district’s Central Office.

Isom added, “ ‘The Swift Story” shows what we can achieve together when we act boldly and in the interest of the most vulnerable of our neighbors.”

“The Swift Story” is made possible thanks to financial support from the Tennessee Arts Commission, Eastman Chemical Co., US Bank and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

After the debut broadcast, “The Swift Story” will be available at watch.EastTennesseePBS.org. 

Happy Birthday!

The Douglass website published its very first post on December 29, 2006.

That means, today, the Tri-Cities' African-American community's information source is now officially 8 years old.

Considering the modern-day internet (the one we all use today), is only 20 years old, it means we have been around for half the life of the internet.

Not a bad recognition.

Thanks for supporting us!

2009 Swift Jr. College and High School Meet-N-Greet and Jonesborough Tour

PICTURES FROM THE MEET-AND-GREET SESSION, PLUS A TOUR OF HISTORIC JONESBOROUGH, HELD ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2009

2009 Swift Jr. College & High School Reunion Meet-N-Greet & Jonesborough Tour - Video Maker

IF THE SLIDE SHOW DOESN'T START AUTOMATICALLY, CLICK ON THE ALBUM TITLE ABOVE TO START IT

2009 Swift Jr. College and High School Reunion Picnic

SLIDE SHOW OF THE PICNIC HELD BY THE SWIFT COLLEGE AND HIGH SCHOOL ALUMNI, HELD ON SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2009 AT THE CARVER RECREATION CENTER, JOHNSON CITY, TN

2013 Swift Jr. College & High School Reunion PIcnic - Video Maker

IF THE SLIDE SHOW DOESN'T START AUTOMATICALLY, CLICK ON THE ALBUM TITLE ABOVE TO START IT

2009 Swift Jr. College and High School Reunion Banquet

2009 Swift Jr. College and High School Banquet - Video Maker

IF THE SLIDESHOW DOESN'T START AUTOMATICALLY, CLICK ON THE ALBUM TITLE ABOVE TO START IT

An Open Letter from Andre Canty

I’m not surprised by the verdict regarding George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin. I wasn’t surprised because in my lifetime, I’ve only remember one case that a White person got off by unjustly killing a Black person. Unfortunately, I saw Trayvon’s body, but what I saw was a kid with skinny jeans and a hoodie that looked more hipster than thug. When I was in high school, I looked more menacing if you went by appearance alone.

I was Trayvon Martin in 2002. At 17 years old in Knoxville, TN, I had baggy clothes, cornrowed braids, often seen with no shirt at sport practices, and rarely smiled standing at 6’1 and 170lbs. I rarely even talked to anyone outside my friends, which may have been cause for suspicion as society view introversion as something wrong. I ran track, but also played football, where I can be violent legally. I was also an honor roll student, painfully shy, never suspended from school, never took drugs or alcohol, attended school almost all the time, and helped my grandfather in the yard every weekend. With all of that said, I’m convinced that I too would’ve been shot dead in Sanford, FL by a self-proclaimed neighborhood watchman as Trayvon for looking worse than him, despite of my clean record and grades. I’m convinced that my killer would’ve been found not-guilty because from my skin and my age because I embodied what they fear the most. By appearance, I was a thug and up to no good. In reality, I wore those clothes because rappers wore them. I wore cornrowed braids because Allen Iverson and the group Outkast had them. What I wore was not evident that I was a thug; it was evident that I followed popular culture. Though I lived the All-American life, I didn’t have the All-American image.

The murder and the verdict proved that Black males were born suspicious. Black masculinity is what some fear the most. Fear is why we have to go way out our way to be as approachable and as safe as possible. A flawed society and system are reasons why I have to appear safe. Black masculinity is why there are systems in place to bring us down, which is why Trayvon was doomed before he was born.

There always has to be some reason why a Black male dies at a young age. If a Black male dies, you often see gangs or drugs as the main factors to their demise as if he provoked his own death. The same has been said against Trayvon. By his appearance alone, he was destined to die? He only defended himself against a man stalking him, but since Trayvon chose to fight, he somehow chose his fate.

If you take a look at his supposed drug use, remember that the last three of our U.S. Presidents smoked weed AND cocaine. President George W. Bush was arrested for a DUI. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger smoked weed. Using drugs is not a factor; it’s a Black male using drugs that’s the problem. Even with Trayvon’s not so squeaky clean record in school, it was impossible for Zimmerman to be aware of that on that day. What Zimmerman perceived is what many perceived: a walking monster.

The fact is that teenagers often do dumb things. We’ve all done it; however, those dumb things should not be cause for murder. Teenagers do dumb things, and then they grow up, and start to do less dumb things.

Trayvon did what you’re taught to do and that was self-defense. The case also proves that Black males cannot engage in self-defense because it will always be their fault.

A Black death is always arguable. Thus is why there are so many reasons as to why he and many like him should’ve died. It is why I know that if I were killed in the same manner some would believe that it was my destiny because of the body I’m in and where I come from. When Emmitt Till’s killers were acquitted, one of the jurors said “If we hadn't stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long.” There isn’t much difference with Emmitt and Trayvon. No matter how Black males strive to be a productive member in society, that same society will strive to condemn you, so what can we possibly do to not seem like a threat?

Most importantly, the law that made this case crazy in the first place is right here in our backyard. The ‘Stand Your Ground’ exists in Tennessee and was lobbied by the National Rifle Association. If anything is to be done, it is to strive to have that law taken away. That law and the verdict just gave some open season to shoot anyone for any perceived threat. I for one will not stand for it because there will be more Zimmermans birthed and more Trayvons killed.


---Andre Canty, Knoxville