CLOVER, S.C. — Students who learned together during segregation were back together Tuesday, celebrating their alma mater’s legacy.
Roosevelt High School graduated its last senior class when Clover Schools fully desegregated more than 50 years ago.
Channel 9’s Tina Terry learned a new legacy wall is preserving the school’s history and the stories of the people who lived it.
“We had second-hand education, but we made it first-hand education,” said former student James Tims.
Tims says love and encouragement from teachers and faith helped students thrive at the York County school during segregation.
“Every day we had the prayer and the principal led us to the flag and we was in church, too,” he said. “So it made a lot of difference in our lives and made us be better people.”
The school started as Clover Colored School in 1922, one of several schools for Black students across the south.
In 1948 leaders renamed it Roosevelt School.
In 1955 many country schools serving Black students closed and kids were transferred to a new Roosevelt School building. Around the same time, Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case ruled separating students on the basis of race was unconstitutional, but full integration in Clover occurred 16 years after that landmark case.
“The teachers, they took so good care of us. If there was something wrong. As you come to school and you were down, they would pull you aside and they would talk to you and get you back to yourself,” Tims said.
This year a new middle school carries on the name of the old Roosevelt School. Alumni came to celebrate and see the memorial wall at the new school on Tuesday.
Many hope it makes a mark on the students there.
“Well, I hope they see, ‘Wow, that’s how it was back then.’ And I appreciate what they’ve got now. Because it’s not bad, it wasn’t bad back then, but it’s a whole lot better.”
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