They graduated from the segregated high school on the cusp of change and into a troubled world.
By JON WILSON
Published May 25, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - Years before last week's graduates were born, Gibbs High School stood behind segregation's veil as a beacon and a shelter, a storehouse of heritage and a wellspring of hope.
"It was the heart of the black community until 1971 or '72, the first year they integrated. It's a lot of things to a lot of people," said principal Barbara C. Shorter, who belongs to the Gibbs class of 1953.
That class graduated on the cusp of change. It entered a troubled world.
The Cold War simmered. The Korean Conflict raged, although an armistice would be signed in July. The Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which would chisel a crack in segregation, waited a year away.
"It was a change in my life," said Fred R. Seay, the 1953 class president. "I was going to be facing things I never faced before. It was kind of scary to a certain extent."
More than 120 graduates marched in Campbell Park in June 1953, the largest Gibbs class to that time.
They became academics, educators, politicians, activists, government employees and nurses.
Essie Manuel Rutledge earned a doctorate and became a college professor. Iveta Jones Berry, president of the Campbell Park neighborhood, was a pharmacist. Eunice Lester Burgess won a special five-year scholarship to Tuskegee Institute and became a counselor. Barbara Smith Anders helped found Academy Prep, an acclaimed private school in St. Petersburg.
Doris Swangles, a founding member of the African-American Voter Research and Education Committee, was a delegate to two national Democratic Party conventions. Edward H. "Creamy" Hayes Jr. won election to the Daytona Beach City Council. Theodore R. Floyd ran for St. Petersburg mayor in 1961. He was 25.
Betty Gilbert Bassett worked 30 years for Florida's old Health and Rehabilitative Services Department. Her daughter is film star Angela Bassett.
Last week, about half the class gathered for a five-day reunion that ends today with a dinner and church service.
Wednesday, members were special guests at the Class of 2003 graduation at the Bayfront Center. The old grads danced and dined Saturday night at the St. Petersburg Hilton, reunion headquarters.
Thursday, at Shorter's invitation, about 30 gathered in the Gibbs library for brunch.
Flashbulbs winked amid hugs, handshakes, lighthearted chat and plenty of stories.
Class members stood and reintroduced themselves. Leonard "Cool Breeze" Howard, who played center on the football team, got the loudest applause.
Cool Breeze? "Because he was so cool," said Doris Smith Jones.
Floyd and Robert Van Brown recalled the time they ventured to convention's cutting edge with student leaders from white schools - St. Petersburg High and St. Paul's Catholic.
It was a kind of council of student councils - and integration efforts were on the agenda, a year before Brown vs. Board of Education made racially separate schools unconstitutional.
"I thought if we could unite the three (schools), we could work out problems," said Floyd, who was Gibbs' student council president.
"We were rebels. We felt like we were fed up," Brown said.
Brown, who also appeared in the senior play Autumn Story with valedictorian Darlene Waller Harris, lives in Houston. He retired in 1990 after a federal career that included the Postal Service, and the departments of Labor and Defense.
School principals didn't support the young men's tri-school idea. Pinellas schools still were 18 years from full desegregation. The best the 1953 students could achieve were ticket exchanges for some school plays and sports events. It was a start.
"We were trying to integrate. It was before the time," Floyd said.
Floyd became a journalist and publicist. He works for the National Black United Front, a coalition of organizations involved in various issues of interest to African-Americans, including reparations.
Ironically, Floyd doesn't hold much affection for his activist days, which included an arrest when he and his older brother tried to integrate the Greyhound bus station's lunch counter on Central Avenue downtown.
"Because of integration and civil rights movement, we have lost our economic base," he said. "I regret every moment I spent in the civil rights movement."
The reunion week is virtually the last time a group of segregation-era graduates will get to see much of the school they loved. A new Gibbs is being built south of the current campus and the old high school building will be torn down next month.
A few '53 grads toured it Thursday. They sang the alma mater . . . "Dear ole, dear ole Gibbs High, You're the world to me . . . "
And they remembered classrooms and nearly legendary teachers: Olive B. McLin, who would lend students lunch money, for example. And Ernest Ponder, the social studies teacher who taught at Gibbs for 24 years, and wrote and spoke about St. Petersburg's black history.
They recalled Ralph James's chemistry class, where lab partners Denval Lester and Maggie Christie Gaines, the 1953 May Queen, caused a furor when one of their mixtures ignited.
"There was a whoosh and a cloud," said Iveta Jones Berry.
Toothpaste was what they had been trying to make, Lester said.
As the classmates talked last week, Gibbs and all other Pinellas schools are on the brink of change again. Court-ordered busing for desegregation has ended, and a new system of "controlled choice" is about to begin. The old grads have mixed views.
"It should have always been choice," said Levi Valentine. Cool Breeze Leonard seemed to agree. Busing tended to scatter the best athletes, he said.
Seay, the class president, said he doesn't like the choice idea.
"It seems we're going back to things the way there were," the retired General Electric employee said. "The kids who are bused, they get to meet kids from other races. How can we grow together as a country and be strong if we want to go back and keep people in the same place?"
Shorter, the Gibbs principal since 1991, will retire as choice begins. Her last day is June 30. With Eunice Burgess, she served a co-chair for the reunion.
