
DATE: Thursday, June 12, 1997               TAG: 9706120438

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ALETA PAYNE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  181 lines

REUNION TO BRING BACK THOSE TOUCHED BY PRINCESS ANNE'S BLACK HIGH SCHOOL

Elizabeth Cason has vivid memories of her days as one of the first African-American students to attend high school in Princess Anne County.

She remembers what there was - an old school bus that had seen previous use as a chicken coop and trailed feathers as it bumped along unpaved roads.

``The white children would laugh when they saw us coming. They'd say, `Here come the chickens!' ''

She remembers what there wasn't.

``We had no laboratory and no library. We brought books from home and borrowed books. I never knew anything about dissecting a frog other than what I saw out in the yard.''

But mostly, she remembers what it meant: Black parents working together to provide for their children what the county would not - a high school. First from a church, then from a building constructed of equal parts cinder block and determination, the Princess Anne County Training School turned Union Kempsville High School graduated its first class in 1938 and its last in 1969.

``Everybody wanted their children to have an education,'' Cason said. ``When you needed things, you didn't wait for the (county) to do it. That PTA would go out to do it.''

On Saturday, students and staff from throughout the history of the school will gather for the first time in the building where many of them attended classes. There, they will celebrate and reminisce about a school where the most important lesson was perseverance.

``I hope (the reunion) gives us not just pride in something they did, but a look at this as an awakening of what we can do if we all pull together,'' said Freddi Moody, chair of the African-American Cultural Council of Virginia Beach and one of the reunion's organizers.

The draw of the event extends beyond South Hampton Roads. A busload of attendees will come in from New York after picking up additional riders in Washington, D.C. And Gov. George F. Allen has sent a message of commendation and ``wishes for a happy and enjoyable all-class reunion.''

At both Saturday's dance and a picnic planned for Sunday, signatures will be collected on a petition to have the school declared a historic landmark, a recognition organizers say is only fitting given all it symbolizes.

``These men and women had one thought in mind - to provide a safe and decent educational environment in which `little colored kids' could learn without fear of snake bites, falling and leaking ceilings, lack of heat and other deplorable conditions found in most existing one-room schools in Princess Anne County,'' Moody said.

At a time when education throughout the South remained segregated, black students in what would become Virginia Beach could receive an education up to the seventh-grade in a one- or two-room schoolhouse run by the county. To go further, however, they had to travel to Norfolk and pay tuition to attend Booker T. Washington, the all-black high school there.

Information about the county's black schools is scattered and hard to come by, but Edna Hendrix, a Union Kempsville graduate and historian for the African-American Cultural Council, has culled property deeds, newspaper clippings, yearbooks and people's memories to trace the schools' histories.

According to Hendrix, African-American parents were advised by a lawyer to buy their own land if they wanted a high school. In 1925, the parents formed the Training School Association and began raising money.

``It was a struggle and a half,'' said Hendrix, who is also the author of ``Black History, Our Heritage: Princess Anne County/Virginia Beach.'' ``All of the one-room schoolhouses pulled together for this goal.''

A year later, with $1,200, they purchased four acres of land on what is now Witchduck Road.

Next, they went to the county School Board to ask that a high school be established on the land, Hendrix said. The residents were told the board would consider their request but nothing ever came of it. When the board was approached again, the response was the same.

In 1931, additional money that had been raised to help build the school was lost in the collapse of a bank. Undeterred, members of the black community again went before the School Board to demand a high school for their children, only to be stalled again, Hendrix said.

Fed up with waiting, the Training Association set up a school for eighth through 11th grades at the Union Baptist Church. Twelfth grade was added later.

In 1935, the county School Board approved the school. Two years later, the Training Association deeded the property to the board for $10 with the stipulation that it revert back when it ceased to be a high school, according to a deed of the transaction.

Money raised by the parents was added to federal dollars, and in the fall of 1938, a four-classroom, cinder block building opened its doors with a principal who also taught classes and three other teachers. It drew black students from Princess Anne's farthest corners. The class of 1938, the county's first class of African-American high school graduates, graduated from the original school at Union Baptist Church and never occupied the new building.

Establishing the school was only the beginning. Parents held bake sales and contests to pay for everything from books to heating fuel to building additions.

Cason, 77, a member of the class of 1938, remembers parents selling chicken dinners to buy encyclopedias for the school. She also recalls one parent appealing to a School Board member for chairs and being told to chop logs for the students to sit on.

``They'd give the blacks the hand-me-downs. But we were glad to get those,'' she said. ``There was never money for the black school. That was the way of life then. They didn't think they were doing anything wrong.''

What the school lacked in materials, it made up for in high expectations and commitment. It became a center to the already close-knit black community and an extension of their families.

Ruby Allen, a 1948 graduate of the Training School, now a music teacher at Green Run High School, said her class of 32 was the largest to that point.

``We had hard teachers. You had to perform. We had to do term papers that were perfect,'' she recalled. And the students rose to the challenge, she said. ``We always knew we wanted to go to school. That was your job.''

And Clyde I. Siler, a 1946 graduate who eventually returned to teach at the school and then at Bayside and Princess Anne high schools, said discipline problems were almost unheard of.

``(The teachers) wouldn't stand for it. They knew the student's mama and grandmama,'' he said.

William Watson graduated from the Training School in 1943, went off to college and then returned to teach U.S. government and history from 1952 to 1969. He recalls a handful of teachers in the early days who had to teach everything.

``The teachers were sincere, and they taught all they knew,'' he said. Even if an English teacher had to step in to lead an algebra class, ``they did the best they could.''

``I loved going to school, never missed time out of school,'' Watson said. ``It was a thrill to me.''

The school eventually started athletics programs complete with a mascot - the Tiger - and school colors - maroon and grey.

Donald Morgan Sr. was a biology and physics teacher at the school who became an assistant principal there and finished up his career as supervisor of secondary science with the district. During his days at Union Kempsville, he was known as ``Three-Day Morgan'' for his willingness to hand out three-day suspensions for the disciplinary problems he encountered, like smoking and leaving campus.

``I was hard, but I was fair,'' he said. ``We had working parents then like you do now, but we had strict discipline in the home and in the school.''

Eight years after the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that segregation was unconstitutional, the Virginia Beach schools began to integrate.

The name of the Training School, considered degrading by some, had been changed to Union Kempsville High School in 1961. Additions, including a football stadium, were made to the campus in 1953, 1959 and 1967. The building currently houses district offices and the Center for Effective Learning.

But enrollment dwindled as black students began attending classes in schools that were better equipped and closer to their homes. In 1969, the school was closed.

Edward E. Brickell, former Beach superintendent and now president at Eastern Virginia Medical School, will speak at Saturday's event. He said his topic will be the ``special bond'' between those who learned and taught there.

``It may have been because of the relative smallness . . . they were sort of a surrogate family,'' he said. ``And many of the faculty were teaching children whose parents they too taught.''

``We were separate, but a fair-minded person would be hard pressed to say we were equal. Maybe living with that also drew them together.''

Moody, one of the organizers, hopes that the historic drawing together will serve as an inspiration for the future.

``Maybe we can take some of the tenacity they had and focus on our youth today.'' she said. ``That's exactly what they did in the '30s and '40s - they focused on their youth.'' ILLUSTRATION: CHARLIE MEADS/The Virginian-Pilot

Elizabeth Cason, above, and her classmates in Princess Anne County

Training School's class of 1938 were the first black students to

graduate from a high school in the county.

Photo courtesy of Edna Hendrix

Teachers from black elementary schools in Princess Anne County

gather together in the 1950s. Most of the teachers taught in one-

or two-room schoolhouses run by the county that only went as high as

the seventh grade. The county did not have a black high school until

1938.

THE REUNION

A black-tie optional dance for former students and staff of the

Princess Anne County Training School/Union Kempsville High School