Sunday, Oct. 25, 2009

School that integrated first honored

It was the dawn of the civil rights era. The U.S. Supreme Court had outlawed public school segregation, sparking hope across a divided nation that black children would finally have the same chance as white children to get an education.

As many in South Carolina rallied against integration, that promise dimmed. Except at one school in Rock Hill.

In 1954, the same year the Supreme Court ruled that separating students by race was unconstitutional, St. Anne's Parochial School became the state's first school to allow black students to attend with whites.

The school of some 30 students, housed in St. Anne's Catholic Church rectory off Saluda Street, opened its doors to five black children from the predominantly black St. Mary's Church nearby.

It was a step nearly a decade ahead of the rest of the state.

South Carolina on Monday will honor the school, now St. Anne Catholic School located off Bird Street, by unveiling a historical marker at its old home off South Jones Avenue.

Former students and teachers, several of whom plan to attend the ceremony, said life inside the school at the time was a world apart from the racial tension coursing through the city.

"When I think about Rock Hill, I feel overwhelmingly blessed to have been a part of that scene," said Sister Marie Magdalena, who taught at the school from 1958 until 1965 and is now in Pennsylvania. "It was a great experience because those little white kids and black kids played well together. They didn't even seem to notice the color."

James White was one of the five black students who enrolled at St. Anne's in 1954. He was a second-grader.

"As children we didn't realize the impact of it all," said White, who was born in Rock Hill and attended public school prior to attending St. Anne's.

Faculty and classmates treated everyone equally, he said. "Basically, we were insulated."

But stepping outside was a harsh reminder of the world around them.

Some mornings while students stood outside reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, people driving by screamed the N-word and other racial slurs.

Families opposed to integration withdrew their children from the school. Others who stayed received threats.

"My parents had friends who wouldn't socialize with them," said Joan Waks, a white student who enrolled in 1952 as a third-grader and was later part of the first graduating class.

"Back then Rock Hill was a divided city," said Brother David Boone, a member of the Catholic Oratory in Rock Hill who has fought for civil rights for decades. "The blacks lived on one side of the railroad tracks and whites lived on the other. They just didn't mix."

Eye-opening experience

The Charleston Diocese created St. Anne's Parish in 1919 for 20 Catholics living in Rock Hill, said Michael Scoggins, a historian with the York County Culture and Heritage Museums. The next year, the parish built York County's first Catholic church, also called St. Anne's. The parish in 1946 built St. Mary's Church off Crawford Street for black Catholics.

St. Anne's Parochial School opened in 1951 with 17 students in kindergarten and first grade and kept adding grades and students in the following years.

The school integrated quietly.

"They made no announcements," Boone said. "People didn't know anything about it until they saw the kids playing together on the playground."

By 1961, 15 black students were enrolled.

State archives show that the second school to integrate, an elementary at Fort Jackson in Columbia, didn't do so until 1963, Scoggins said. Public schools in York County didn't start integrating until 1964.

In 1958, three nuns, including Sister Magdalena and Sister Mary Louise Gallagher, from the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, came from Pennsylvania to teach at St. Anne's School.

"I had heard stories about the South, but never experienced it," said Magdalena, 25 at the time. "I remember getting off the train and being surprised at the water fountains. They were separated for whites only and blacks only.'

Those early days shaped lives.

"It left me scarred," Waks said. "Just the knowledge that people hate you for what you are. They hated us for going to school with black people. And they hated black people for being black. It took me until I was an adult to really fully comprehend the significance of what I was part of."

In a recent letter to the school, Waks, now an attorney in New Jersey, wrote:

"I can honestly say that my experiences at St. Anne's made me who I am today. People sometimes wonder why I have such a deep sense of social justice. Then I tell them about my time at St. Anne's and what the first students witnessed and endured, and how our parents were ostracized by some in the community because of their willingness to be a part of something so right but truly controversial in a small Southern town."