Post by admin on Oct 10, 2011 15:35:27 GMT -5
www.app.com/article/20111009/NJNEWS/310090054/Freehold-alumni-remembering-school-days-past
FREEHOLD — Whether it was having milk and cookies every day or going outside to count the acorns that had fallen off the Acorn Tree, the alumni of the Court Street School all agreed, their school days were the best.
“I remember, every day, the milk truck would pull right up to the front of the school,” said Tony Thorpe, of Brick. Thorpe attended the school for four years . And although he has fond memories, the school was desegregated by the time he was attending the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.
The Board of Trustees for the Court Street Education Community Center, the current name of the building that housed the school for 73 years, hosted a school reunion at the (old school atop the hill between Court and Rhea streets) for its former students, family and friends.
At the event, two former students, Bigerton “Buddy” Lewis and Anna Straws and a former teacher, Mary Webb Wright, were honored as the school’s patriarch, matriarch and last surviving teacher, respectively.
“I was perfectly happy here, (at the school) I have good memories. This was our world, our place, our school,” Lewis said.
Lewis, of Freehold, attended the school from 1932 to 1940.
“If we were underprivileged, we did not know it — the word was not coined yet,” he said.
Norma Lewis Randolph, of Freehold, was one of the last segregated students graduating from the school in 1948.
“I remember we had to take a test to see if we could go to high school,” she said.
And, in preparing the students going on to the high school, which was not segregated, the students were taught how to act, how to speak and how to get along with the white students, and not be combative.
“I was scared, I didn’t know what to expect when I got to high school,” she said.
Kevin Coyne, the borough’s historian, said in the early part of the school’s history, the students that managed to graduate from the eighth-grade had three choices: go to work, go to the Bordentown Training Center (a trade school) or go to high school. He also said the first black student to graduate from the borough’s high school was in 1918.
The school building historian is Lillie Hendry.
At the onset of the program, she came into the room ringing a school bell, the school’s original and only school bell.
“The bell does not mean recess,” she said chuckling.
She gave a brief history about the school, saying that after World War II and after the state constitution was revised to desegregate schools in 1947, the Court Street School closed for a few years. The school reopened for all children in 1952 . However in 1974, it closed for good. Thereafter, the local children attended the Park Avenue School.
By 1981, the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders had taken over the building .
However, by 1990, the Court Street School Education Center Inc., a nonprofit organization to preserve the site, was formed. The group presented its proposal to make the site an educational community center and to preserve it as an African-American historic landmark.
“The county offered us a 50-year lease for $1 a year, and we couldn’t give them that $50 quick enough,” Hendry said.
The group also received more than $800,000 from the New Jersey Historic Trust and the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders to restore the building.
In 1995, the building became an official historic site of New Jersey and was placed on the National Register of Historic Sites.
“There are a lot of loyalties of our alumni and guests, and we learn to appreciate what we had in the past as a guide to our future,” Hendry said.
FREEHOLD — Whether it was having milk and cookies every day or going outside to count the acorns that had fallen off the Acorn Tree, the alumni of the Court Street School all agreed, their school days were the best.
“I remember, every day, the milk truck would pull right up to the front of the school,” said Tony Thorpe, of Brick. Thorpe attended the school for four years . And although he has fond memories, the school was desegregated by the time he was attending the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school.
The Board of Trustees for the Court Street Education Community Center, the current name of the building that housed the school for 73 years, hosted a school reunion at the (old school atop the hill between Court and Rhea streets) for its former students, family and friends.
At the event, two former students, Bigerton “Buddy” Lewis and Anna Straws and a former teacher, Mary Webb Wright, were honored as the school’s patriarch, matriarch and last surviving teacher, respectively.
“I was perfectly happy here, (at the school) I have good memories. This was our world, our place, our school,” Lewis said.
Lewis, of Freehold, attended the school from 1932 to 1940.
“If we were underprivileged, we did not know it — the word was not coined yet,” he said.
Norma Lewis Randolph, of Freehold, was one of the last segregated students graduating from the school in 1948.
“I remember we had to take a test to see if we could go to high school,” she said.
And, in preparing the students going on to the high school, which was not segregated, the students were taught how to act, how to speak and how to get along with the white students, and not be combative.
“I was scared, I didn’t know what to expect when I got to high school,” she said.
Kevin Coyne, the borough’s historian, said in the early part of the school’s history, the students that managed to graduate from the eighth-grade had three choices: go to work, go to the Bordentown Training Center (a trade school) or go to high school. He also said the first black student to graduate from the borough’s high school was in 1918.
The school building historian is Lillie Hendry.
At the onset of the program, she came into the room ringing a school bell, the school’s original and only school bell.
“The bell does not mean recess,” she said chuckling.
She gave a brief history about the school, saying that after World War II and after the state constitution was revised to desegregate schools in 1947, the Court Street School closed for a few years. The school reopened for all children in 1952 . However in 1974, it closed for good. Thereafter, the local children attended the Park Avenue School.
By 1981, the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders had taken over the building .
However, by 1990, the Court Street School Education Center Inc., a nonprofit organization to preserve the site, was formed. The group presented its proposal to make the site an educational community center and to preserve it as an African-American historic landmark.
“The county offered us a 50-year lease for $1 a year, and we couldn’t give them that $50 quick enough,” Hendry said.
The group also received more than $800,000 from the New Jersey Historic Trust and the Monmouth County Board of Freeholders to restore the building.
In 1995, the building became an official historic site of New Jersey and was placed on the National Register of Historic Sites.
“There are a lot of loyalties of our alumni and guests, and we learn to appreciate what we had in the past as a guide to our future,” Hendry said.