Teach and remember black history lessons

By ROGER LANDERS, Hernando History
Published January 28, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Robert Martinez] Moton School, the historic black school in Hernando County, was also known as the community center when it was in operation. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in the public schools, the students and faculty of Moton were sent to the county's white schools.

While visiting Brooksville City Hall recently to view the Civil War artwork of muralist Tony Caparello, I was pleased to see a portrait of Frederick Douglass.

As many recall from their American history studies, Douglass was a leading African-American spokesman for the abolition of slavery in antebellum America. Douglass was the initial focus of Negro History Week, begun in 1926 and expanded into Black History Month in 1976, now observed each February.

I was introduced to the study of black history in 1967.

The local School Board, in preparation for the desegregation of the public schools, assigned three teachers and one administrator to Moton School, the historic black school in Hernando County.

The three teachers from outside the county, although dedicated, were long past their prime and did not represent the best teachers that Hernando had to offer. This was not surprising for the time. Local teachers would not have ventured into the black community.

I was the administrator who went to Moton. I was willing and eager to enter the ranks of local school administration and jumped at the chance for the assignment.

I am sorry to report that I had no idea where Moton School was. So, the weekend before the first day of school in August 1967, I made a trial run to find it. I was surprised at how easy it was to locate - and how different from what I had expected to find.

The main building was a Works Progress Administration WPA facility with about seven classrooms. There was also a new upper-elementary building with adjoining restroom, an administrative office and an auditorium-cafeteria, all built about 1955.

The high school building contained four classrooms, restrooms, a home economics suite and a library. There was a new science room. The physical education building consisted of a boys and girls locker room, just like the one at Hernando High School, minus the gymnasium.

On the other side of the football field was the new six-classroom building for the earlierelementary grades. The agriculture and art classroom were wood-frame structures from the early 1950s, near the physical education building.

Separate and unequal

I immediately realized the doctrine of "separate but equal" education meant separate, but certainly not equal. Those born in the South during 1960s and earlier had grown up in a racially segregated world.

It was not unusual until the mid 1960s to find a sign at the courthouse water fountain that read "white only" and a "colored entrance" at the movie theater.

From the time of post-Reconstruction, the separation of the races became the legal and cultural norm. For black people who ventured into the white world, it was speak when recognized, step off the sidewalk, come to the back door.

The newspapers did not report social events from the black community. Only tragedy in the black community made the local papers. When the death of an older black resident was reported, the person was often referred to as "aunt" or "uncle," and frequently described as being from the "old school" of social norm.

In June 1926, the Brooksville Colored Investment Co. received its articles of incorporation from the state of Florida. An announcement of a new black business went unnoticed in the news. M.F. Williams, W.M. Heard, J.W. Gleness, W.J. Lovett, E.W. McGee, P.H. McGee, R.G. Glenn and J.H. McMahon planned to operate a general merchandise business in Brooksville.

Local social events were reported in black-owned newspapers of the state, but only when someone wrote a letter detailing the events.

The Lewis Plantation and Turpentine Still roadside attraction, open from the 1930s through the 1950s, was the epitome of the negative racial stereotype. In 1950, Mildred Moore Drake worked as a waitress in the gift shop and as a dishwasher. When Gov. Fuller Warren had dinner at the restaurant, his black driver ate dinner in the kitchen with Drake and her mother, Willie Mae Moore.

So that was how it was in the early 1960s. When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and outlawed segregation in the public schools, a dramatic new direction took hold.

Soon, the all-black school, Moton, would no longer be the hub of the African-American community in Brooksville. No longer would there be a football team or a band and homecoming parades up Lemon Avenue or a prom. The students and faculty of Moton were sent to the county's white schools.

The loss of identity for the traditional community must have devastated many. However, in the newly assigned schools, children had new books, not the "hand-me-downs" of old, and a chance to right a century-old wrong.

Forty years later, the segregated schools are now only a distant memory.

Yet another reason to teach and remember black history.

But thank goodness, those days indeed are history.

Roger Landers is retired from the Hernando County school district, where for nearly 33 years he was a teacher, principal and district administrator. He is the historian for the county's Heritage Museum, historical adviser to the new Hernando County Historical Advisory Commission and a member of the Florida Historical Society. He can be reached at roger58@gate.net.

[Last modified January 27, 2008, 20:39:55]