Leaders talk to highschoolers about school life during segregation

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Former college students and educators from two of Lexington’s all-Black excessive faculties are taking a visit via time to interrupt down the realities of segregation and extra for college students at Frederick Douglass Excessive College. 

The leaders who have been college students earlier than Fayette County Public Colleges desegregated are actually the alumni strolling college students via what it was prefer to should combat for inclusive training and setting. The historic Douglass alumni affiliation’s Virgil M. Covington Jr. helps carry the efforts collectively. 

“What they’re studying within the historical past books, that we have now people and the 5 people on stage have skilled it. it’s not one thing distant, one thing that they’ll ask him questions on and discover out.” Virgil M. Covington Jr. mentioned about their tales. 

Every of the previous alumni shared a bit of what it was like for them earlier than and through the transition to built-in faculties.

For some, like Helen Case Wade who could be one of many first Black college students at Lafayette Excessive College in Lexington, it was greater than troublesome. She and the group described moments that modified how they seen their journey. Wade defined an incident in school by which she was the one particular person of colour in a room of over 200 others and was verbally discriminated in opposition to for being Black. It is one thing that caught along with her to this present day.  

Wade’s longtime neighbor and classmate at Douglass, Beverly Benton, mentioned she additionally felt the stress of the instances earlier than getting into school.

Benton mentioned usually they felt they have been at an obstacle. Though their academics have been certified and skilled in superior research, their faculties lacked entry to wanted supplies, class availability and extra. 

“However the academics made the distinction and so many people went house to school, and that might not have occurred,” Benton defined. It is why she says academics have to be acknowledged for his or her help for college students and that she’s grateful for his or her assist throughout a time of separation. 

“Had it not been for the academics there at Douglass Excessive College — in order that little segregated college on worth street, it was invaluable,” Benton mentioned. 

Now that they’re part of Lexington historical past and as pioneers of integration, the alumni hope to shine a lightweight on the impression of a darker time which may stop it from repeating itself.