Ernest Shaw pic

Ernest Shaw

For reasons too numerous and perhaps too controversial to detail here, our school system was woeful at the midpoint of the past century when I was born in Greeleyville. Most black children and some white children lived in educational deserts. A 1941 study commissioned by Governor Maybank found that 19 of our 46 counties lacked a single high school for blacks. The state government as a willing primary educational provider is a relatively recent development. Other entities filled the void and established schools. Students from many communities often left home to attend the historically black colleges serving as “high schools” and institutions of higher learning.

The school for whites in Greeleyville date back to around 1890. The November 8, 1900, edition of The County Record noted that Mr. N.D. Lesesne, retiring County Superintendent of Education, was elected Principal of Greeleyville High School. In 1908, “the Colored School Board” purchased land near Trinity Colored Baptist Church in Greeleyville, and Joe S. Montgomery and other trustees of the black Oak Grove Baptist Church near Salters bought a quarter of an acre of land from Elizabeth Wilson for the Oak Grove Public School. The landscape was dotted with one-room-one-teacher schools.

For decades, poor states like ours struggled to support two racially segregated and unequal systems. In 1947 the state spent $221 per white student and $45 on each black student. Progress by blacks usually resulted from federal intervention in response to suits filed by the NAACP. The state responded with animosity toward the federal government and civil rights organizations like the NAACP. In 1943, the federal court forced our state to equalize the pay of black teachers and white teachers who were equally qualified.

Meanwhile, in Clarendon County, a legal storm with even more serious implications was brewing. A refusal to provide transportation for Black students had escalated into an attack by the federal government on our sacred principle of separating schools by race.

James F. Byrnes, TIME Magazine’s 1947 Man of the Year, former congressman, US Senator, Supreme Court Justice, and US Secretary of State was arguably the greatest South Carolinian ever. However, when I was born, he was back home running for governor promising to improve education for all students. As governor, he led a last-ditch effort against federal intervention by passing a 3-cent sales tax to improve woeful black schools while assuring whites that there would be no race mixing in our schools. Nearly $125 million was spent building schools including one in Greeleyville by the time I started school. Most of this money was spent on black schools for children whose parents were excluded from the political process, but some went to white schools to gain the political support of whites who voted and paid most of the taxes.

The Supreme Court ruled in the spring of 1954 that separate schools were unconstitutional. However, months later, The State newspaper proclaimed the opening of the “New Negro School” in Greeleyville. I was too young for school, but I vaguely remember hearing that the children attending Oak Grove Church School would attend Tomlinson or Greeleyville’s new school.

By the time our state leaders realized that the Supreme Court would not be deterred, Battery Park, Cades, Chavis, Tomlinson, and Williamsburg County Training (WCT) in Nesmith, Cades, Hemingway, Kingstree, and Greeleyville were educating black children in modern schools. South Carolina continued to fight. The year I started school the legislature passed the anti-NAACP oath and black teachers were dismissed for being members of the NAACP or for refusing to swear that they or family members were not members.

Not all black leaders favored school integration. My father’s family was members of St. Paul Methodist Church near Kingstree until they left the Hells Half Acre area in the mid-1940s. Rev. McClary was the pastor of St. Paul as the push for integration gained momentum. In September 1955, the local newspaper published a story in which he expressed opposition to efforts to mix black and white children in schools. McClary's article was reprinted nationally by sympathetic white editors. When McClary was fired by the church, the pro-segregationist White Citizens' Councils, met at a Kingstree tobacco warehouse and took up a collection for Rev. McClary. He soon left the state and died in 1971.

In time “Equalization schools” faded into the pages of history as consolidation continued in our county. A year ago, I wrote about Tomlinson High School’s Class of 1970, on the eve of their consolidation with Kingstree High School. Battery Park, Cades, and Chavis disappeared soon thereafter leaving only WCT standing. I believe that its closing is a moment worthy of reflection.

As I wrote about the last class of Tomlinsonians, I sensed that our time of reckoning was near. Those charged with making decisions about the educational future of our children and handling public resources should not be second-guessed by those of us who would preserve all vestures of our past-including old schools located in areas with declining populations. Yet, the closing of our school is difficult to accept.

Four years ago, WCT’s Class of 1968 celebrated the 50th anniversary of our graduation. In these pages, I reflected on attending a special school with special people that I will forever be proud to call my classmates and my teachers. Most of our teachers are gone and I have not seen some classmates in 54 years. I have attended funerals recently and those of us still alive have passed the three scores and ten years noted in the Bible at Psalm 90:10. Despite our obsession with the school days of our youth, the average life expectancy for blacks is a more relevant subject now than math and history.

At our reunion, I proclaimed often that we would always be 68, 50 years after graduating at 18. Eventually, Class President Mable noted that she was only 67. I then realized that 50 years earlier we had elected perhaps the youngest member of our class to lead us. Naturally, Mable became a teacher, just like Bernice, Ronald, and Victoria. When I spoke at Mable’s funeral a year later, she was 68. The mortician was Mrs. Samuels, one of our teachers from 1968. My final request to her was to gently take our fallen classmate back to Greeleyville and lay her down not too far from where Samuels Funeral Home had buried Mrs. McClary, our first grade teacher 20 years earlier after a life of teaching.

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A week later, I attended a program for my parents at Charity Baptist Church in the Suttons community. Evangelist and 1968 classmate Deloris, Mable’s sister Phyllis and her husband were there. The speaker was the Rev. Sam Giles, a 1974 graduate of our school and its principal for the 2005-06 school year. When I last saw him, a group of WCT/C.E. Murray alums had returned to Greeleyville to give back school supplies to students at Greeleyville Elementary School where he was principal. The program ended and Mrs. McClary’s daughter Ophelia thank me for mentioning her mother at Mable’s funeral several days earlier.

Recently Mable’s husband Leroy, of the class of 1968 called after classmates Deloris and Franklin who is married to classmate Lurilla called from Greeleyville with news of the death of classmate Victoria. Leroy and I are still handling leftover funds from our reunion so on Saturday I headed to his house to get signatures on a check from our Bank of Greeleyville account and a card for Victoria’s family. I got lost on the twisting and winding streets near his home even though I had been there many times. I attributed my lack of focus to the fact that I was visiting for the first since his wife, our classmate died.

Vickie taught for 38 years. She said that she was inspired to teach by Mrs. Emily Myers who spent 34 years teaching students including my future wife. Her son “Nate” was educated at Johnson C. Smith, the Citadel, USC, and Francis Marion where Vickie was educated. Nate Myers was a teacher, administrator, coach, athletic director, consultant, motivational speaker, master of ceremony, broadcaster, sportscaster, music director, producer, and announcer. He also coached basketball at Williamsburg-Blakely High School for several years. He was emcee of a program for my parents during my one meeting with him, Mrs. Myers’ husband and son have died but she has endured and celebrated her 100th birthday a year ago.

The day after visiting Leroy, I returned to Greeleyville to hear my 94-year-old father preach his final sermon at Promise Land Baptist Church. Several years earlier during the funeral of another classmate, he said, “Lucille went to school in Greeleyville with my son Ernest. He promised me that he would be here for her funeral, but I don’t see him.” I always thought that funerals should be about the deceased but at that moment I thought it prudent to raise my hand and announce to daddy and the church that I was present as I had learned to do so long ago in a Greeleyville school.

After that final sermon, I drove by the former all-white-Greeleyville High to our school built long ago in hopes of placating a federal government intent on forcing white children and black children to learn together in Greeleyville. It has been 54 years since our 1968 graduation at age 68. Now our school is closing after SIXTY-EIGHT years and will always be 68 also. That realization left me intensely prideful, and sorrowful but feeling blessed and convinced that the time for the bell to toll for the final time had come. I drove to Dimery and Rogers Funeral Home in Kingstree to say goodbye to Victoria. Heading home, I reminisced about a journey filled with memories of brief encounters and enduring recollections of time spent in sacred places with people who are still dear more than half a century later as we graduate from this life with increasing frequency. I wish I could hug each one and place a golden apple on the desk of everyone who taught us despite the greatest of challenges.

Our school never truly achieved racial integration and some schools that did are moving back toward resegregation. While the courts ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional two years before I began school, I never had a non-black classmate in 12 years and our schools did not move toward segregation until two years after I graduated. The survey that recommended the construction of the equalization school for blacks in Greeleyville also recommended closing the all-white Greeleyville High School. For 15 years after the 1954 decision, our state continued to resist efforts to have black and white children attend school together.

When the state finally developed a desegregation plan many whites living in areas with large black populations enrolled their children in private academies that sprang up. Some areas also lack the population diversity that some would desire, and many schools are as segregated as ever. The public schools have suffered from the flight of whites, their resources, and their influence. Increasing numbers of parents and powerful politicians continue to promote the idea of having public funds follow the student even if they are not attending public schools. Final figures will show that approximately 98 percent of the students at C.E. Murray High School are classified as minority students. However, I don’t need to see the figures because on the few occasions I was privileged to stand before an assembly of my old school, I could see the obvious.

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This newspaper regularly publishes a visual display of our two educational systems in the form of photos of graduates of our schools, private and public and we should congratulate each graduate. As they go forth into the world. However, a 1979, story in The Charlotte Observer quoted state officials as saying that “Mr. Murray has proven that a black school is not necessarily a bad school.” We have within our control the means to continue to prove that this is still true. In an ideal world, all our children will willingly learn together about each other as we explore the complexities of our shared history, but we are not there yet.

Consolidation is a reality requiring us to ensure that every student is afforded the best education possible, even if we must close a school that helped to form the very core of people like me. As the final bell toll for our school with such an incredible history, its legacy will live on forever. A school is truly so much more than a building. Recently, I visited the Secretary of State’s office to secure forms to ensure that our little Columbia WCT/C.E. Murray Alumni group formed long ago by characters in this story remains in compliance with the law even after the bell tolls in Greeleyville. I will also put my membership dues in the mail, and I pledge to support the ideals represented by our school until the end of my time.

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