For now, a portion of E.E. Butler High School is called the Butler Center and houses a pre-kindergarten program. For now, ivy climbs from the ground up, clinging to the side walls and stretching over decorative checkerboard window panes. For now, the hallways and classrooms remain silent and empty.
Until Saturday.
Butler Tigers will return to campus, joined by community members, and Ninth District Opportunity to remember the school 50 years after its closing.
The world was much more black and white when Butler High opened in 1962, in the literal sense. A segregated school despite the Brown v. the Board of Education ruling in 1954, Butler High operated for only seven years before it was closed.
“We were in the South and this is the time we lived under the rule of Jim Crow, so it was separate, supposedly equal,” said Emory Turner, who graduated from E.E. Butler High School in 1966 and, like many of his classmates, recalled having to use “colored” water fountains, bathrooms and sitting in the back of buses. He will be one of many Butler High School graduates who will gather at the school Saturday, August 24 from noon until 2 p.m. for a remembrance ceremony.
When Butler High opened, students from Fair Street High School transitioned to the modern school building on Athens Street. In just a few short years, the students would transition again in 1969, the high school was closed and Gainesville High was integrated.
Saturday, alumni are welcome to tour the building, check out some memorabilia and reminisce among friends. Teachers and students will share testimonials about their time at the school. Shirley Lipscomb, class of 1969, said her class was proud to continue the Butler legacy.
“This year, the class of ’69 will share with others a financial legacy that we are going to leave behind as we prepare to embark upon the Fair Street-Butler High reunion 2019,” said Lipscomb. She said they would reveal what they have been working on for four years at the Saturday ceremony.
The sense of community encompassing E.E. Butler High is something that made a difference in the life of Gainesville City School Board Vice Chair Willie Mitchell, who graduated from Butler in 1967. He remembers the lifelong friendships: classmates marrying, starting families and strengthening communities, and the impact of teachers.
The theme for the 50th anniversary remembrance ceremony is “Where do we go from here?” Mitchell said the theme was poignant and should remind alumni to check in with themselves as they explore their alma mater.
“The first question I ask myself is, what happened and why? After all, the school board made a decision to close the newest school in its inventory, and I wonder if that decision was made just to come in compliance a law? And if so, was integration the goal? And if integration was the goal, I have to ask myself, ‘has it worked?’” he said. “And the reason I have to ask myself ‘has it worked?’ is because of the simple fact that integration at its best is the opportunity to show the beauty of diversity.”
“I hope the alumni of the school system would ask themselves, ‘has it worked?’”
Turner said while Jim Crow was a terrible thing, it also drove him to get a great education. As a ninth grader transitioning to Butler from Fair Street, he said it forced him and his classmates to work smarter.
“We had teachers that realized the situation, and we worked hard to make the best about what little we got,” said Turner. He described secondhand school book passed down from white schools with the pages missing and vandalism, but said they knew that didn’t excuse them from working hard and banding together to get their assignments done. “We had to figure out, as children, how to network with someone in your class that had the page that you were missing so you could get your assignment done.”
“It made us better because of the worse situation we were in,” he said. Like Mitchell, he also credited a strong sense of community and the concept of a neighborhood school for a support system among his family, his teachers and his neighbors.
“I went 12 years and the southern institution of education denied me, denied the Supreme Court and I went 12 years of all black education, and there was nothing wrong with it, but it was not equal. It was separate. And I had teachers that talked to me, that I needed to really spent time learning because the system had the cards stacked against me.”
Mitchell said while education was still happening in the building, he’d like to see education more closely aligned with the original E.E. Butler mission and more connected to the community. “When you talk about the beauty of diversity, maybe one thing that’s missing is that you have some people that don’t understand some other people, so therefore the solutions to some of the problems we face may not be realistic to them because they just don’t know,” Mitchell said.” But when I was in Butler High, we were talking about people that knew the struggles that you had so they could relate… and were able to maneuver you to some of those things to guide you to the way you should act or the things that you should learn so that you could overcome those things.”
Kenneth Brown, class of 1969, knew that feeling. He said without the guidance and support he got from teachers at Butler High, he wouldn’t be the same person today.
“The memory that stands out for me is the learning we received from the teachers there at Butler. We had teachers that were very good at what they did and the reason I say that is because it helped me throughout my years as I extended my education through college and also in life,” said Brown.
He said he had many favorite teachers but immediately recalled how Nathaniel Shelton, the organizer of the Gents Club, impacted him. “It was incredible in my life, pivoting from a direction that could have been devastating to a direction that was fruitful. You know, I think about it all the time. I really don’t know what would have happened if Mr. Nathaniel Shelton had not played an important role in the lives of myself many others, especially young men, throughout our time at Butler and after it closed.”
Saturday, Brown will deliver the prayer during the remembrance ceremony.
1969 was also the final graduating class of E.E. Butler High School.
The roar of an E.E. Butler Tiger will never be silenced. In February, Gainesville High School basketball players honored Fair Street and E.E. Butler High Schools at Throwback Night in maroon and white uniforms. The Fair Street-Butler Alumni Association keeps classmates in contact and plans a reunion each year. And Saturday, a streak of Tigers will once again be free to roam the campus of their beloved alma mater.
