by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

The history of Sewanee Elementary School is a story about “of, by, and for the people.” The opening of school this coming fall marks SES’s 100th birthday, a birth that may have never happened without the assistance and fundraising efforts of the Sewanee Civitan Club (SCC), the forerunner of the Sewanee Civic Association. But the story actually begins 50 years earlier with the like-minded generosity of a man from, of all places, New Jersey.

In 1867, Jabez Wheeler Hayes leased a 100-acre plot that would become the site of St. Mary’s convent. Hayes built a large steam sawmill and a schoolhouse near the railroad station. In 1872, the school had 75 students, and 100 students by 1875. Women from University families often served as teachers of children whose parents could not read and write.

Recognizing the need for a community place of worship, the parish church consecrated in 1875 served both white and African American parishioners who held services at different times, with the parish church also becoming the schoolhouse for both black and white children. In 1891, the white parishioners relocated to the newly constructed Otey Memorial Church and schooling for white children shifted to the Billy Goat Hill School while the black children continued to attend school at the parish church.

Located on Billy Goat Hill near the Mountain Goat Railroad, a potbellied stove heated the two rooms and hall at the Billy Goat Hill School, with well water for drinking carried in buckets from the depot, a privilege assigned to the best students. Studies included Latin, plane geometry and algebra. By 1899, the two instructors teaching nine grades had 150 students. By 1916, the charges assigned to the then three teachers had doubled to 300. In the early 1920s with the school overcrowded and in disrepair, the newly formed Sewanee Civitan Club made building a new school its mission.

The proposal called for locating the school on land leased from the University at the site of the St. Mark’s Church which had continued to be the place of worship and schooling for the African American community. Since the University owned the land, the county refused to fund the construction. The University committed to contributing stone and pledged $1,000 toward the $10,000 fundraising goal. A play given by the French club raised $43. Bridge parties, a play presented by village children, and a fancy dress ball netted another $75. By the summer of 1924 the church had been torn down and reconstructed as a school for the black community at Happy Hollow, and the cornerstone was laid for the Sewanee Public School (SPS), a structure today called Sewanee Elementary School.

Community members donated labor after leaving their day jobs. In the fall of 1926, SPS opened the doors to students, with four classrooms, an auditorium, and five teachers charged with teaching eight grades and two years of high school. The county paid the teachers salaries and the SCC paid for the building’s upkeep, insurance, and occasionally subsidized teachers’ wages, as well. Eventually, the county began paying rent for the building to offset expenses, but during the depression years the rent was waived. By 1929 the school had 180 pupils and 245 by 1932. In 1933 townspeople and local charities funded the construction of four more classrooms. In 1943, the SCC funded extending the school year from eight months, the county’s practice, to nine months for both white and black students, enriching the opportunities for learning and extracurricular activities.

The Woman’s Club provided hot lunch for five cents a day at SPS. Sewanee resident Waring McCrady, who started first grade there in 1944, remembers classmates unable to pay bringing canned green beans and other vegetables from home to contribute to the school lunches rather than paying in cash. Robin Bates, who started first grade in 1957, recalls classmates paying for their lunches by sweeping the auditorium and setting up the tables for lunch.

Another memory that stands out for Waring is children coming to school barefoot or only coming on the days when they were the child selected to wear the one pair of shoes children in the family shared, families living in homes with mud floors and newspaper pasted to the walls to keep out the wind.

A “good reader,” the first-grade teacher sat McCrady in a circle with other “good readers,” instructing the children to “read to the period,” then pass the book to the next person. “One girl read ‘ Mr.’ and passed the book,” McCrady said, laughing. For John Patton, who started first grade in 1963, the beginning of integration at SPS, being read to by volunteers left a lifelong impression. “When they read to us, I could see the story in my mind. It later influenced my ministry in both my teaching and preaching,” Patton said.

Unlike the integration experience of African Americans at the other county schools, Patton insists, “There was no trauma for us.” Karen Vaughan, then Karen Kirby, started SPS in the third grade when her father came to seminary at Sewanee in 1959. She remembers integration as “no big deal. We all played together anyway.”

“There are things I can’t talk about with other black people,” John Patton conceded. When he mentioned Girl Scout cookie sales to a black acquaintance in the valley, they replied with disbelief, “You had girl scouts?” John’s younger sister Evelyn was in both Brownies and Girl Scouts. “People from Winchester tell Blacks from Sewanee, ‘ You act like you’re white. You act like you’re special,” Evelyn Patton said. “We grew up in the Sewanee bubble.”

John Patton said the early instances of racism he experienced were “subtle. We were young. It didn’t scar us,” he observed. His first experience of racism was when accompanying his father to do yard work. As he’d been taught, he naturally addressed the couple living there as “Mr. and Mrs.” It shocked him to hear the couple’s daughter call his father by his first name “John.”

Evelyn Patton first experienced racism attending ballgames in Tracy City and other off the domain schools to watch her brother play sports.

Robin Bates repeated a school yard rhyme containing the “N word” one afternoon when visiting a classmate’s home. “I learned the rhyme at school. I didn’t know what the N word meant,” Bates said. His playmate’s father came out of the house and suggested a substitute word, “tiger.”

In 1950, the Sewanee Civic Association (SCA) (having assumed the role of the SCC) solicited funds to construct a new school for the African American community, named the Kennerly School honoring African American educator John “Fess” Kennerly who had devoted much of his life to teaching the local black children.

By 1955, the financial demands of maintenance and improvements at SPC had become more than the SCA could manage, especially with winter on the way and a new furnace needed. The SCA turned maintenance and renovation of Sewanee Public School over to the county in exchange for the promise of a new furnace and cafeteria.

The first brick addition came in 1960, with two more classrooms to meet enrollment demands, and the SCA petitioned the county to begin integrating the school one grade at a time, beginning with first grade. This never happened.

In 1963 eight families with school age children, four black families and four white families, the majority from Sewanee, filed a lawsuit against the county to end segregation. The final decision in June of 1964 stipulated children, regardless of their race, would attend the school in their zone. But the Sewanee community had already taken action on its own. Determining the African American Kennerly School with only two rooms and two teachers for eight grades was inadequate and geographic rezoning could not be used to solve the segregation problem, SPS started phasing in black children in the fall of 1963. In the summer of 1964, a voluntary tutoring program eased the transition for children from black families, with full integration underway when classes started in the fall of 1964.

The shift of all the African American children to SPS required four more classrooms. The SCA raised $50,000 to fund the construction. Community members made loans with no guarantee of repayment, according to Bates. Others sold their life insurance policies. Otey Parish Hall offered space for use as classrooms, as well. John Patton recounted having three black teachers during those first years of integration at SPS.

In the 1980s, when Vaughan taught at SES, a drumbeating Klansman and his robed colleagues appeared in the school yard. Vaughan said Principal Ruth Ramseur confronted him, demanding, “Get off my campus. Leave now.” “Ruth was a small woman,” Vaughan observed, but the men heeded her demand and left.

For SPS students, though, lack of awareness of racial differences did not translate into lack of awareness about class.

McCrady recalls a group of children on the lawn waiting for the bus chiding a black child who walked past and shouting racial slurs. McCrady later asked his mother what the “‘N’ word” meant, and she scolded him, threatening to wash his mouth out with soap if he ever used the word again. Who were the harassers and why was their behavior so different from children who lived on the domain? McCrady attributed the animosity to generational bitterness tracing back to mining families losing their jobs to African American convicts leased from the state by the mining company, men often unjustly imprisoned to supply the post-civil-war labor vacuum.

“There were fights almost every day,” John Patton said. “We’d all be playing ball together and someone would say something, and it would start.” For John and Evelyn Patton, the animosity came from the “across the tracks people.” “They believed the University treated the Blacks better than them,” Evelyn Patton explained. The Blacks held positions she described as the “dirty jobs,” cooks, groundskeepers, janitors. As John Patton pointed out, though, receiving “a paycheck” was preferable to eeking out a living by subsistence farming or sharecropping.

Bates cited yet further awareness of class division in the groups he identified as skilled laborers, such as carpenters, and professional people, such as physicians. “As kids, we just knew who was in what group.”

But Vaughan insisted, “It didn’t matter if you spent the summer in France or laying bricks with your daddy, when you walked through the doors at SES, everyone was an individual.”

John Patton’s favorite teacher was his third-grade teacher Elizabeth Majors. “She failed me,” John said. “She was hard. She was hard on everybody. She cared about you.” John went on to excel in a successful 40-year career.

Elizabeth Majors’ name came up frequently in speaking with former SPS students. Vaughan’s childhood recollection of “Miss Majors” was “tall. She always wore heels.” When Vaughan returned to SPS to teach in in 1980, she was shocked to discover Elizabeth Majors was in fact, quite short, not the towering symbol in the childhood memory of Vaughan and many others.

Much has changed over the years. When Bates was in school, unmarried teachers were addressed by their first name and married teachers by their last name. “Miss Mignon” became “Miss Winn” when she married.

State law required children to attend school until the age of 16. A girl in McCrady’s fourth grade class turned 16 midyear, left school, and immediately married.

Both McCrady and Bates received paddlings for minor offenses, but the paddling was likewise minor. “I wondered if it was supposed to hurt,” McCrady said. Apparently, though, class was not a determining factor. McCrady’s brother received a paddling “that made his bottom red.”

The recent emphasis on testing dismays Vaughan. “Teaching became a job, not a profession. It’s all about the numbers, not the people.” Vaughan’s favorite class to teach is first grade, the joy “of seeing the lightbulb come on when they learn to read and learn math skills. Helping kids learn makes me happy. Teaching the love of learning makes me happy.”

Bates fourth grade class performed “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in French, with his mother Phoebe Bates volunteering as a French language tutor. With volunteering long a hallmark at SPS, the Friday School program formalized the idea in 1977, with community members sharing their expertise and experience teaching an array of classes ranging from yoga, to sewing, to gymnastics.

When SES opened its first library in 1948, community members donated many of the books. Rightfully, the school’s Sewanee Parent Organization (SPO), the driving force behind SES projects and enrichment, is always a top recipient in the Sewanee Community Chest fund drive. This year’s budget earmarks $25,000 for the SPO. To help SES celebrate its 100th birthday by making a donation, visit: <https://sewaneecivic.org>.

In addition to those mentioned above, special thanks to Annie Armour, Scott Bates, Arthur Ben Chitty, Elizabeth N. Chitty, Eileen Degen, Patricia Short Makris, Una McBee, Trudy Mignery, Ina May Myers, Gary Phillips, Ruth Ramseur, Ann Watkins, Mignon Winn, and Mike Winn. Other sources include The Sewanee Purple (January 30, 2014) and The Messenger (January 22, 2021). For more information on SES history go to the SCA website <https://sewaneecivic.org/projects/>.

Sewanee Elementary School librarian, Kathryn Bruce, will be presenting the program on “SES Celebrates 100 Years” at the SCA membership meeting at 6 p.m., Monday, March 2, in Kennerly Hall.

To share a special memory, photo, or memorabilia of the public school, contact SES at <1926ses@gmail.com> or leave a note in the mailbox in the school’s front lawn.

To watch the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Desegregation of the Franklin County School System, go to <https://vimeo.com/84777567>.

For more information on the work of Save Sewanee Black History, go to <https://blacksewanee.org/>.