The Meridian Star
MERIDIAN —
By Ida Brown
ibrown@themeridianstar.com
& Brian Livingston
blivingston@themeridianstar.com
Any other night, Barbara Sanders would have stood in her front door and surveyed her neighborhood before going to bed.
"I'm always checking because it's not the safest place in the world, and we have a lot of elderly people who live around here," said Sanders, who resides on the East End side of town on 11th Avenue and 22nd Street.
But as she prepared to turn in on the evening of Aug. 26, Sanders did not follow her usual bedtime routine. A few hours later, she was abruptly awakened by loud banging at the door.
"I looked out and saw fire trucks and thought, 'Oh my gosh! Our house is on fire!' The heat was so intense, you could just feel it," she said, her words filled with excitement as she recounted the incident.
Sanders lives next door to her mother and had spent that night with her.
"I said, 'Mom! The house is on fire! Get up and get out!" she said.
The two women soon realized that it was not their house on fire, but a building across the street – the Old East End Headstart Center.
"I said, 'Oh my God! The school is gone!" said Sanders, still shaken by the event.
According to Meridian Fire Department officials, firefighters responded to the call of a structure fire at about 2:14 a.m. on Aug. 27. When they arrived at the East End Headstart Center, they found the entire building covered in flames.
For several hours firefighters hosed down hot spots within the wreckage and for the following two days, firefighters were called out to douse other hotspots that would reignite in the debris.
Officials said the investigation into the cause of the fire is ongoing. They did not know when the final report would be made public.
The fire destroyed the original East End Headstart building to its base; only the outer shell of the building's newer part remain.
"It's an ugly site up there," said Sanders' mother, Ruthie. "I just wish they would come and clear it away."
Later that morning after firefighters had contained the flames, residents began to come by the site.
"You could see the sadness on the people's faces," Sanders said. "A lot of them found out about it the hard way – just as they were passing by."
Many who lived in the neighborhood came together and reminisced about the building, which was also the former site of East End School, the area's first school for blacks.
"Everybody from this neighborhood went to East End School or East End Head Start," Sanders said. "East End School was where I went my first day of school; I attended first and second grades there. It was my foundation."
Sparse history
Not a lot of information is readily available on East End School, but according to Meridian resident Billy Beal, the educational facility was attended by the area's black students. Before Magnolia School was constructed, East End held double sessions.
"There were morning and afternoon sessions; some children attended from 7 a.m.-12 p.m., some from 12 p.m.-4 p.m.," Beal said.
While he did not know the exact date of when East End was built, Beal said his father, who graduated from high school in 1935, was a student there. He also noted that in later years, Meridian Community College conducted a GED center at the location – concurrent to the HeadStart Program – and the building was the site of the East End Nutrition Center.
Fond memories
The structure's recent demise has conjured many fond memories for alumni of both East End School and the Old East End Headstart Center.
"I remember it being a fun place," said Henry Granger, who attended first through sixth grades at East End School from 1949-55.
"We initially did not have a cafeteria; we had to carry our lunches and eat them inside the classroom," Granger said. "Later on, they built a cafeteria."
East End School was also attended by a noted Meridian native – singer David Ruffin of The Temptations.
"He was a few grades ahead of me, but I remember seeing David there as a student," Granger said.
For Annie Hill, East End will be fondly remembered as the first school she attended, as well as the first school where she taught.
"I went to school there first through sixth grades," said Hill, who is retired after more than 33 years in the Meridian Public School District.
"We used to march into class every morning to music. And if you switched your coattails when you turned the corner, Mrs. (Emma B.) Ivy would pull you out of line and you would get a spanking," Hill said, laughing at the memory.
Jennie Ruth Crump was one of her early teachers.
"She was a very good teacher," Hill said. "She would get me to do some of her writing, because I tried to write just like she did."
Upon finishing high school, Hill was hired as a teacher at East End School.
"When you finished high school, they would hire you as a teacher because they had a shortage at that time," she said. "I taught fourth and fifth grades."
After she enrolled in college and earned a degree in elementary education with an emphasis in kindergarten through third grades, Hill returned to East End School, where she taught kindergarten for another 12 years.
Hill said she shed a few tears when she first learned that the Old East End School building had been destroyed by fire.
"I wondered what happened to the school's old records," she said. "I was hoping they were going to turn East End into a museum."
With the recent construction of a new East End HeadStart Center just across the street, the older building had been vacant for a number of years. Like Hill, Sanders had hoped the structure would be preserved for its historic value, as well as sentimental.
"The building was old and antique, but it was beautiful," said Sanders, who teaches music in the Meridian Public School District.
"The teachers at East End School were so good, they instilled qualities into you at that early age and molded you to get through those tough middle school years and those high school years. The next thing you knew, you were in college ... Like I said, it was my foundation; that's where I learned I could make something of my life, I could be somebody."
A little more than a week since the fire the scent of charred wood and bricks is faint, but still lingers in the air. Yellow caution tape surrounds the crumbling edifice and a bulldozer used to complete the demolition sits at the end of the street.
Among the ruins are glimpses of some of the old classrooms – one bulletin board shows a faded image of a dog smiling while holding a bone in its mouth; another one with intricately cut letters with the word "health."
"This is a loss for the community, especially the black community," said Robert Barfield, who attended first through fifth grades at East End School in the mid-'50s. His children attended HeadStart at the center.
"We're losing all of our buildings. If we don't buckle up and do something with Wechsler (the first brick public school building in Mississippi built with public funds for black children), the same thing will happen – just like it did with the Baptist Seminary (a former school for blacks that also hosted several Freedom schools during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s).
"These buildings are just sitting idle; people are going in and out of them and doing all kinds of things to them. Something has to be done to preserve our heritage in the black community," Barfield said.
