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At last, Gibbs High is truly a 'Miracle on 34th Street'

By SCOTT TAYLOR HARTZELL
Published February 23, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - During Gibbs High School's 50th anniversary celebration, former principal Emanuel Stewart spoke of marvels.

"New students will feel privileged when they are chosen to attend this "Miracle on 34th Street,' " Stewart said.

For decades after opening in 1928 as a high school, Gibbs endured systematic neglect from the School Board.

Daily, its black students endured inadequate facilities and shared, secondhand supplies. Enrollment at times doubled its capacity. Integration placed new challenges on the institution as it labored to maintain its identity.

"How did anything worthwhile come out of the old Gibbs?" Stewart asked during the celebration before naming such educators as O.B. McLin, Ruby Wysinger and Ernest Ponder.

"There was a strong eagerness to learn, a sense of loyalty to the school . . . an indomitable spirit."

Before 1928, Pinellas County failed to offer black students education past the sixth grade. Families responded by enrolling their children in private, church-related or prep schools on black college campuses.

Anticipating westward expansion in 1927, officials constructed an eight-room, $49,490 elementary facility for whites at Ninth Avenue S and Fargo Street. The Depression slowed the expansion, however, and the inadequate building became the 34th Street Colored School.

"We later sacrificed our avenues for the school," said former Gibbs student Minson Rubin, 60, creator of an exhibit honoring Gibbs at the St. Petersburg Museum of History. "There is no Fargo Street today. No Ninth Avenue S."

Students and faculty members later named the school after black clergyman Jonathan C. Gibbs, a former Florida secretary of state (1868) and superintendent of public instruction (1873).

Gibbs died mysteriously in 1874 amid rumors he was poisoned.

A custodial room at the high school served initially as principal Samuel Reed's office. The library consisted of books received from churches and organizations. Desks were castoffs from St. Petersburg High and other white schools.

"We had carved-up desks," said Ella Mary Holmes, 88, a Gibbs valedictorian (1934) and former Pinellas educator. "Families had to buy textbooks before the county sent discarded ones."

During principal George W. Perkins' first reign (1929-1932), bricks were sold at $10 each to build a gymnatorium. Theresa McKinney became the county's first female high school principal in 1932. Two more principals would serve before Perkins returned (1938-1946). The Gibbs Library and Perkins Elementary School credit his contributions.

A 1943 city report described an overcrowded Gibbs, a school built for 350 students that was educating 781. No expansion occurred; however, in 1945, the School Board balanced teachers' pay scale.

"Before, they paid black teachers less than white teachers," Holmes said.

Gibbs' football team traveled as far as Jacksonville to compete with other black schools. The players stayed in opponents' homes. Without a home field, the Gibbs Gladiators played without bleachers at Campbell Park, the "Dust Bowl."

Despite parental protest in 1970, Gibbs became a predominantly black high school that emphasized vocational training. Dissent as well as integration in 1971 returned Gibbs to regular high school status.

"We were one of the few Florida black schools that didn't close during integration," said Stewart, 86, principal from 1958 to 1969.

Gibbs avoided serious disruption during integration, but students and families were alienated. Blacks "felt the loss of a valuable cultural center," notes a Gibbs history.

Whites couldn't "develop loyalties for a school so far away."

In the mid 1970s, however, hands joined to petition for and receive $8-million from the School Board. Additions - including a cafeteria, a business education wing and a performing arts stage - appeared. The Newton-Williams Gladiator Field emerged to honor two Gibbs athletes who were killed by lightning in 1971.

Gibbs initiated a magnet program in 1982 that is today the Pinellas County Center for the Arts, which includes performance theater instruction. Gibbs also features the Business, Economics and Technology Academy magnet program.

In 2006, construction will be completed on a $54-million Gibbs facility, reportedly the largest education project in county history. About 2,300 students will benefit from the nine buildings, which will boast a theater with more than 800 seats.

"Gibbs is finally getting the kind of facility our community needs and wants," said Gibbs graduate and longest-serving principal (1991-2003) Barbara Shorter, 68, another who made the "Miracle at 34th Street" happen.

Scott Taylor Hartzell can be reached at hartzel@msn.com

[Last modified February 23, 2005, 00:34:19]