by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

At the annual black history celebration hosted by the Cowan Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church, Brigette Janea Jones took the audience on a tour of Winchester’s African American history. Fittingly, the program was held at the Townsend Cultural Center, formerly the segregated Townsend School. Until 1966 desegregation, only at Townsend could Franklin County African American students receive a full 12-year education and high school diploma.

Historian and Director of Equitable Partnerships at the Belle Meade Plantation Historic Site, Jones titled her talk on local black history “A Resilient People.” Pre-statehood records from 1794 show early Tennessee settlers brought their slaves with them. The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not free slaves in Tennessee, Jones said, because Tennessee was not officially engaged in rebellion against the Union. Declared free in 1865, African Americans made education a priority. By 1869 Franklin County had 17 black teachers and 625 black students. Born into slavery in Franklin County in 1848, the Reverend “Doc” Townsend escaped and joined the Colored Troops of the Union Army. Soon after the war, Townsend graduated from Nashville Normal and Bible College and returned to Franklin County to establish the acclaimed Institute for Colored Teachers to provide teacher training. Franklin County African Americans had no easy life, Jones said. Demonstrating their commitment to education, she showed a 1900 grade record. “They picked cotton, hauled water, and still came to school and earned 95-100 on their report cards.”

Many southern states banned the early 1900s Niagara Movement calling for a black renaissance. Significantly, Jones noted, Tennessee gave birth to the white-supremacist Klu Klux Klan. In 1925 funds from philanthropist Julius Rosenwald and local contributions built the Townsend Training School. The African American community donated $1,700, over one-third of the $6,695 cost, a significant sacrifice for people earning meager wages doing physical labor. The school offered instruction only to the eighth grade, but in 1931 the African American community made plans to expand the school to 12 grades. In December 1932, the wood-structure school burned. No records explain the fire’s cause, but Jones suspects arson. “It was common for institutions, schools and churches, to burn at the time.” Supported by public funding, the new Townsend School graduated its first senior class in 1934.

The 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision declared segregated schools unconstitutional, but as was the case with the Emancipation Proclamation, the court ruling did not change things in Franklin County. It took the 1963 Hill vs. Franklin County School Board lawsuit brought by local families to desegregate the Franklin County Schools.

The evening culminated with honoring the undefeated 1958 Townsend football team. Presenting awards to players and their descendants, Sandra Brown said, “Sometimes acknowledgement is a long time coming. It took 18 years for Martin Luther King to get his day. The 1958 football team has waited 64 years.” Of the 33 teammates, all but 11 have passed, and only two were able to attend the ceremony, brothers David Bonner and Bishop Willie Lee Bonner, Jr. Commending the team and coach Joe Lujan, Bishop Bonner said of football, “It’s all about togetherness.”

His words echoed the closing remarks of Pastor John Patton who praised the African American community for coming together in 2019 to save the Townsend School from demolition and founding the Townsend Cultural Center and Museum. “You sacrificed and persevered to keep our history strong. We are not a forgotten people.” Historian Jones appealed to the community to pursue digitization of the historical records. None of the documents about local African American history are available in digital format from the Franklin County Library. “People leave the community and stories leave with them,” Jones said. “The stories are our culture, our history. We have to keep the stories alive.”