Located in Beulah, Alabama on Lee Road 270. Coordinates: 32.7129106, -85.17494
Located in Smiths Station along Lee Road 249 near Highway 379. Coordinates: 32.5795822, -85.1127148
Located in Bleecker, Alabama on Lee County Road 240 Coordinates: 32.5195831, -85.2221628
Located in West Opelika on Highway 431 (Lafayette Parkway) between Sougahatchee Creek and Chambers County Road 290. Coordinates: 32.7425, -85.42333
Auburn University; Lee County, AL; East Alabama Male College; Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Social Clubs; Auburn; Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage; Civil War
The Lane House was built in 1853 at the corner of Thach and College Streets in Auburn. It was the residence of several prominent figures in the history of Auburn University. The home was leased in 1873 by Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama Treasurer E.T. Glenn. Future owner (and the home's namesake) Brigadier General James H. Lane was a revered Confederate veteran from Virginia. He rose in the ranks from Major to Brigadier General by age thirty in 1862. He was wounded three times and fought in every major battle of the Army of Northern Virginia before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia in April 1865. It was a squad of his own men who accidentally shot Major General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. After arriving in Auburn, Lane taught Civil Engineering, eventually becoming the Chair of the Engineering Department. General Lane purchased the home in 1884. He was also a leading figure in the establishment of the School of Engineering and the college's Corps of Cadets. The property was sold by his daughter in 1960 to Auburn University to become the site of the school's new library. To save the home, Mollie Hollifield Jones purchased it for the Auburn Women's Club, moving it to its current location at 712 Sanders Street. Added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1991, the home continues to serve as the offices of the Auburn Women's Club.
Image: Home: User sfwife, waymarking.com, http://www.waymarking.com/gallery/image.aspx?f=1&guid=2b230b57-b2a2-4de6-b5a8-1160869852fb Text: Lee County Heritage Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants: 2000), Kenneth Phillips, James Henry Lane, Encyclopedia of Alabama, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1614
Auburn Heritage Association: Historic Markers
Lee County, AL; Civil War; East Alabama Male College; Darby, John; Auburn, AL
A professor of natural science and one of the original trustees of the East Alabama Male College, he also taught chemistry and developed a “Prophylactic Fluid” which was widely used as a disinfectant and antiseptic by Civil War surgeons and hospitals. A potassium permanganate solution, it was probably made in a building close to where the president’s home stands today.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Dowdell, James Ferguson; East Alabama Male College; Auburn, AL
James Ferguson Dowdell served during the Civil War as the organizer and commander of the 37th Alabama infantry regiment. After the war, he assumed the presidency of the East Alabama Male College from 1866 to 1870.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Armstrong, Henry Clay; East Alabama Male College; Confederate Army; Reconstruction; Alabama House of Representatives; Brazil; Auburn, AL
Henry Clay Armstrong was a student at the East Alabama Male College prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. After becoming a lawyer, he enlisted and became a captain in the Confederate Army where he served until the end of the war. During Reconstruction, he served as a state legislator, speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, state superintendent of education, and eventually the Consulate General to Brazil. He returned to the EAMC where he served on the board of trustees and the executive council.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Union Army; Rousseau, Major General Lovell Harrison; Sherman, General William T.; Decatur; Johnston, Major General Joseph; Atlanta; Confederate Army; Texas Hospital; Wilson, General James H.; Phenix City; Columbus, GA
On July 10, 1864, Major General William T. Sherman ordered Major General Lovell Harrison Rousseau to depart from Decatur, Alabama with approximately 2,500 men. Their goal was to sever the Montgomery and West Point railroads - a vital link for funneling supplies from central Alabama to Confederate Major General Joe Johnston's overwhelmed and outnumbered forces in Atlanta. Along the way, Rousseau's men were to destroy every scrap of government supplies or materials that could be used to aid the Confederate defense of Atlanta. Local slaves in the Auburn/Opelika area funneled information to Rousseau and his men about the area's weak defenses. In Auburn, only a handful of patients at the Texas Hospital were able to offer even token resistance. As Rousseau and his cavalry rumbled through the streets of Auburn and then Opelika, they burned warehouses, burned train depots, the post office, and disabled the local rolling stocks. Union soldiers returned once again on April 15, 1865, this time under the command of Major General James H. Wilson. They swept through Auburn, Opelika, and Phenix City, before finally making their way across the 14th Street Bridge into their intended target, the massive industrial city of Columbus, Georgia.
Encyclopedia of Alabama: Rousseau's Raid Encyclopedia of Alabama: Wilson's Raid New York Times July 27, 1864: Gen. Rousseau's Raid Routes of Union Activity in Alabama (Maps)
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn University; East Alabama Male College; Button, Stephen Decatur; Civil War; General Lovell Rousseau; Morrill Act; Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College; Old Main Hall; William J. Samford Hall
After the state awarded East Alabama Male College its charter on February 7, 1856, the Board of Trustees set about securing funds to build an administrative and educational building. The trustees initially allocated $25,000 for the facility, but the building that came to be known as Old Main Hall required an expenditure of approximately $60,000 to complete. Stephen Decatur Button, a nationally prominent architect, designed and built the four-story Italianate-style academic building. Old Main Hall was the primary building of the East Alabama Male College from 1856 until 1887. During the Civil War, EAMC suspended operations like so many of the country’s other academic institutions. As faculty, staff, and students left school to join the Confederate war effort, the EAMC shuttered its doors from 1861 to 1864 when Old Main Hall, Langdon Hall, and the Chapel were converted into makeshift hospitals for wounded soldiers arriving from Atlanta. In 1864, Texas’s state legislature paid to convert Old Main Hall into a convalescent hospital that they dubbed Texas Hospital. The ramshackle hospital housed over four hundred Confederate soldiers, many of whom never saw their homes again and were buried in nearby Pine Hill Cemetery. Old Main also acted as a parade ground where soldiers from nearby Camp Beauregard and Camp Johnson marched and drilled during the war. In July 1864, Major General Lovell H. Rousseau and his force of approximately 2,500 Union cavalrymen raided the cities of Auburn and Opelika where they destroyed thirty-five miles of railroad tracks, the local post office, and Pebble Hill. In an effort to defend the city, sixteen-year old John Hodges Drake and approximately thirty or forty convalescents from the Texas Hospital offered some token resistance to Rousseau's raid, to little avail. The Federal cavalrymen left the bedridden and newly minted prisoners alone and did little damage to civilian property. In fall 1866, students returned to attend classes in a building ravaged by the elements and war. In the early morning of June 24, 1887, a fire broke out in Old Main Hall’s lower basement chemistry lab. The ensuing conflagration consumed the entire building. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the students met for classes in the Chapel. In 1888, the school erected a new administration building, William J. Samford Hall, on Old Main Hall’s original foundation. Old Main Hall’s cornerstone is still visible at the base of the northeast corner of Samford Hall. Old Main Hall’s building originally occupied the space that is now 182 South College Street, Auburn University.
Image Source: http://www.auburn.edu/communications_marketing/150/lecture.html Text Source: Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes, and Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012), 9-11.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Phenix City, AL; Columbus, GA; Wilson, Major General James Harrison; Union Army; Russell County, AL
Formerly known as the city of Girard, Phenix City, Alabama (along with Columbus, Georgia) was the location of one of the last land battles of the Civil War. On April 16, 1865, Bvt. Major General James Harrison Wilson swept through Auburn and Opelika and then into Phenix City with three divisions of Union soldiers. After crossing over the 14th Street Bridge from into Columbus, the once mighty industrial city would fall within mere hours.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Opelika, AL; Rousseau, General Lovell Harrison; Auburn, AL
The city of Opelika, Alabama was incorporated on February 9, 1854. Because of the many rail lines that snaked through the city, warehouses were built during the war to store cotton and other goods. When General Lovell Harrison Rousseau’s men stormed through Auburn and Opelika in July 1864, they destroyed railroads and other property including Opelika’s warehouses.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Dowdell, Betty; Auburn Bank; Lincoln, Abraham; United Daughters of the Confederacy; Auburn, AL
Near the modern-day Auburn Bank, a boulder imprinted with a plaque commemorates the raising of the first Confederate flag in Auburn by student Betty Dowdell on March 4, 1861 — the same day that Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th President of the United States. The plaque was dedicated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy during the postwar period.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Davis, Jefferson; Montgomery, AL; Confederacy; Confederate Army; East Alabama Male College; Columbus, GA; Rousseau, General Lovell Harrison; New Orleans, LA; Richmond; United Daughters of the Confederacy; Auburn, AL; Wilson, General James Harrison
In February 1861, president-elect Jefferson Davis rode a train from his plantation in Mississippi to Atlanta and then to Montgomery, Alabama for his inauguration as president of the Confederacy. On February 16, at the Auburn train depot, president-elect Davis reviewed the Auburn Guards, a company of cadets from the East Alabama Male College who were reportedly the first of the Confederate Army to be reviewed by Davis. Because the Montgomery and West Point Railroad connected Auburn with the state capital at Montgomery and the vital industrial city of Columbus, GA, the Auburn train depot and tracks were later destroyed under Rousseau and Wilson's raids, in 1864 and 1865 respectively. It was replaced by a second station after the end of the war which was located to the west of the current (and final) depot. In 1893, the Auburn cadets formed an honor guard when former Confederate president Jefferson Davis's body was sent by train from New Orleans to Richmond. In commemoration of the former president's visit to Auburn, on March 30, 1914, the United Daughters of the Confederacy unveiled a marker near the depot that stands today.
Pine Hill Cemetery has over 1,100 graves and contains a mass grave of at least ninety-eight unidentifiable Confederate soldiers who died in the makeshift hospitals in Auburn. In 1893, the Ladies Memorial Association erected a monument over the spot believed to be the site of the mass Confederate grave. An additional seventy-one Union and Confederate soldiers are buried in marked graves through the cemetery. The cemetery is located in Auburn at Armstrong Street and Hare Street. Coordinates: 32.6006903, -85.4777268
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Auburn, AL; Religion; Langdon Hall; Auburn Presbyterian Church; Slavery; Reese, Edwin; Old Main Hall
Founded as the Auburn Presbyterian Church in 1851, “the Chapel” was built by local slaves belonging to one of Auburn’s first residents, Edwin Reese. Like Langdon Hall and Old Main Hall, it served as a makeshift hospital from July 1864 through the end of the Civil War. It is currently the oldest building in Auburn still standing on its original site and the second oldest building overall. It is still in use today as a multi-faith chapel.
Floyd D. Warner, Auburn Players Theater: National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form
Lee County, AL; Civil War; Camp Beauregard; Camp Johnson; Confederate Army; Auburn Guards; Beauregard, AL; Auburn, AL
These two camps trained six groups of Confederate soldiers that included the local Auburn Guards as well as the 14th, 18th, 37th, and 45th Alabama infantry regiments.
Lee County, AL; Civil War; The Lathe; Selma, AL; Sherman, General William Tecumseh; Union Army; Columbus, GA; Irondale, AL; Ironclads; Atlanta, GA; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Auburn University; Samford Hall; Auburn, AL
In the early years of the Civil War, the Lathe was constructed in Selma, Alabama to bore out 7-inch Brooke rifles that were the mainstay of Confederate ironclads and coastal fortifications stretched across the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. As Major General William T. Sherman's Union army marched towards Atlanta in the summer of 1864, Confederate officials decided to move the Lathe to the other major Confederate industrial center of Columbus, Georgia to avert its capture. On the way, it was buried in Irondale, Alabama as Sherman's forces bore down on Atlanta and eventually unearthed as Union forces moved further east. It spent the rest of its usable life in Columbus where it continued to bore cannon until the Confederacy's collapse in the spring of 1865. After the war, it was purchased and used by the Birmingham Rolling Mills - later part of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company - before it was presented to the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (later Auburn University) in 1936 where it has stood next to Samford Hall ever since.
Auburn Plainsman: The Legend of the Lathe Historic Markers Across America: the Lathe
Education; Lee County, AL; Rosenwald Schools; Loachapoka, AL; African American Schools; Rosenwald, Julius; Pearson, Dr. Ann, Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church; Lee County Historical Commission; Randolph, O.L.; Crittenden, Emogene Willis; Lee Crossroads School
In the spring of 1913, Loachapoka became the site of the first of over 5,300 rural black schools in the United States subsidized by Sears CEO Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald, who grew up destitute, wanted to provide African Americans living in the South with the opportunity to acquire an education in the years before desegregation. He contributed $300 to the school’s building fund and the white and black citizens of Loachapoka raised the remaining $493. The two-room building contained a fireplace to accommodate its heating needs and glass-paned windows. The building initially lacked both electrical wiring and indoor plumbing. The elementary school serviced grades one, two, five, and six, while grades three and four were taught nearby at the Lee Crossroads School on Lee County Highway 188. Eventually, Loachapoka Rosenwald School closed as the town’s African-American children enrolled in other elementary schools, but the town continued to use the building as a community center. In 1960, a fire consumed the wooden structure. Now only a scant few bricks and a portion of the broken concrete foundation remain of the school, which is located on the property of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church at 2 Day Lily Street, Loachapoka. Dr. Ann Pearson, a former Auburn English professor, researched the Loachapoka Rosenwald School, determined that it was Rosenwald’s first rural school, and spearheaded an initiative to erect a historical marker at the former site. On November 11, 2011, the Lee County Historical Society hosted an event to commemorate the Loachapoka Rosenwald School at which several former students and teachers spoke. Emogene Willis Crittenden, a former student, remembered her principal, O.L. Randolph, as a mild-mannered father figure. Due to a lack of public visibility at the actual site of the school (which is located behind Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church), the Lee County Historical Commission decided to place the marker across Day Lily Street from the church.
Image Source: http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMHPR8_First_Rosenwald_School_Loachapoka_AL “Loachapoka School,” Fisk University Rosenwald Fund Card Database, http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/?module=search.details&set_v=aWQ9MzE3&school_county=lee&school_state=AL&button=Search&o=0 Text Sources: Bradley Roberts, “Rosenwald Schools,” Chattahoochee Heritage Project, http://www.chattahoocheeheritage.org/2011/12/rosenwald-schools/ “Loachapoka School,” Fisk University Rosenwald Fund Card Database, http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/?module=search.details&set_v=aWQ9MzE3&school_county=lee&school_state=AL&button=Search&o=0 Natalie Wade, “Nation’s First Rosenwald School to be Recognized in Loachapoka; School Memorabilia Sought,” AL.com, http://blog.al.com/montgomery/2011/10/nations_first_rosenwald_school.html
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn Public School; Auburn Rosenwald Public School; Auburn, AL; Ebenezer Baptist Church; African American Schools; Hutchinson, Rev. J.T.; Rosenwald, Julius; Moton, Dr. Robert; Washington, Booker T.; Tuskegee Institute; Lee County Training School
In March 1915, a group of concerned Auburn citizens held a fund-raising rally at Ebenezer Baptist Church aimed at financing a school for the town’s African-American children. In attendance were over three hundred African Americans and about a hundred whites. The campaign was led by the white Presbyterian minister, the Reverend J.T. Hutchinson. The city’s white and black population collectively raised $1,550 for the building fund. In 1916, Sears CEO and noted philanthropist Julius Rosenwald contributed $300 to the proposed school’s foundation, and construction of the facility commenced. The school building was completed in 1917, and consisted of five rooms that offered seven grades. Dr. Robert Moton, Booker T. Washington’s successor as principal of the Tuskegee Institute, delivered the keynote address at the building’s dedication ceremony and lauded Rosenwald’s contribution to African-American betterment. Auburn Public School became the town’s first African-American grammar and intermediate school. The school would serve as Auburn’s African-American school until 1929, when a second Rosenwald school, Lee County Training School, opened its doors. Lee County Training School offered a high school diploma as well as secondary education, and the students of Auburn Public School all enrolled in the new Rosenwald institution. Auburn Public School’s building occupied the corner of Bragg Avenue and Frazier Street, Auburn.
Text Sources: “Auburn School (C.T.S.),” Fisk University Rosenwald Fund Card Database, http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/index.php?module=search.details&set_v=aWQ9MzEx&school_county=Lee&school_state=AL&button=Search&o=0 Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes, and Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012), 54-55.
Education; Lee County, AL; East Street High School; African American Schools; Carver Elementary School; J.W. Darden High School; Opelika Colored School; Opelika, AL
Between 1910 and 1912, the city of Opelika erected the Opelika Colored School, the town’s first black public school. The school was located on East Street and housed ten classrooms. The school catered to students from the first to the tenth grade, and was soon renamed East Street High School due to its location. In 1951, J.W. Darden High School opened and took on East Street’s ninth and tenth grade enrollment. In the aftermath of this realignment, East Street High School became Carver Elementary School.
Image Source: http://ohsclassof52.bizland.com/id195.html Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 79.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika, AL; J.W. Darden High School; Desegregation; Civil Rights Era; Darden, Dr. J.W.; Head Start; Opelika High School; Opelika High - Southside Campus; Johnson, Judge Frank M.; Brown v. Board of Education; Department of Justice; African American Schools; Peterson, Birdie; East Street High School
Founded in 1951, J.W. Darden High School took on the ninth and tenth grade students of East Street High School and added eleventh and twelfth grade curricula. Darden was Opelika’s African-American high school until the city’s high schools integrated in 1972. The school board chose to name the black high school after J.W. Darden, Lee County’s first African-American doctor. From its inception, Darden High served as a focal point of local African-American community life in Opelika. Interviews of former students relay the sense of pride that Darden High instilled in Opelika’s black residents, despite fighting a losing battle with the school board for adequate funding. Birdie Peterson, a 1965 Darden graduate, remembered Darden as a “premier school” and imparted the respect that its students had for their educational environment, claiming that they “kept that building up as if it were (their) our own home.” In May 1968, the Department of Justice forced the city school board to end construction on a $350,000 remodeling project at Darden High School. The DOJ saw the expansion of Darden as a measure taken to appease local African-Americans and maintain Opelika’s segregated school system in defiance of Brown v. Board of Education. In the fall of 1970, in an attempt to delay conformity to Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson’s order to fully integrate, Opelika’s school board refashioned Darden High School as a vocational school. They renamed Darden Opelika High – Southside Campus and included the school’s student body in its enrollment figure despite the separate locations of the schools so as to make Opelika High School appear integrated when it in fact had done no such thing. The black student body remained at Darden for the next two years as Opelika’s school board scrambled to build a new high school and comply with the court integration order. Upon the opening of Opelika’s integrated high school, the school board decided to close Darden despite its relative newness in comparison to the rest of the city’s school buildings. Many in Opelika’s black community mourned the school’s closing. When Darden closed, the Opelika’s African-American population lost their high school football team, cheerleading squad, color schema, and to some degree a sense of local autonomy. The school board then sold the Darden High School building to Head Start, who still uses the facility, located at 600 South Fourth Street, Opelika, today. A strip of grass in front of the facility frames a stone marker commemorating Dr. J.W. Darden and the efforts of the many teachers who molded the minds of Opelika’s black high school students.
Image Source: http://www.classmates.com/places/school/Darden-High-School/28068?hitwiseSegment=free&checkCookie=1417644400216 Text Sources: Joseph M. Bagley, A Meaningful Reality: The Integration of the Opelika, Alabama City School System, 1965-1972 (MA Thesis, Auburn University, 2007), 46, 35, 51-53. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 79.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika, AL; Opelika High School, 1972-Present; Desegregation; Civil Rights Era; Johnson, Judge Frank M.; J.W. Darden High School; Opelika High - Southside Campus
In 1969, U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson ordered the Opelika to desegregate its school system. Observing that African Americans comprised 30 percent of the students enrolled in Opelika city schools, Johnson demanded that all of Opelika’s public schools contain a comparable percentage of African American students by the 1970-1971 school year. In the fall of 1970, Opelika High School (then located on the site of modern-day Opelika Middle School on Denson Drive) reported 37 percent African American enrollment. However, Opelika’s school board denoted J.W. Darden High School (Opelika’s black high school) a vocational adjunct campus of Opelika High School in November 1969 and renamed the school Opelika High – Southside Campus. Coincidentally, every student who chose a vocational curriculum in fall 1970 was African American, and Opelika’s high schools consequently remained segregated. The 37 percent enrollment figure included the raw total of the two separate campuses. Noting Johnson’s irritation over the violation of the spirit of his order and fearful of being censured by either him or the Department of Justice, in 1971 Opelika’s school board purchased property and quickly began erecting a new high school. They recognized that the Denson Drive campus was too small to accommodate the newly-integrated student body. Completed in less than 10 months by a Texas-based architectural firm, the new Opelika High School opened in fall 1972. No massive white flight or significant violent episodes occurred upon the school’s full integration. In the years since its opening, Opelika High School constructed an on-campus football stadium, a performing arts center, a new band room, and a video production studio. The school stands to this day at 1700 Lafayette Parkway, Opelika.
Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opelika_High_School Text Sources: Joseph M. Bagley, A Meaningful Reality: The Integration of the Opelika, Alabama City School System, 1965-1972 (MA Thesis, Auburn University, 2007), 5, 42-48. Opelika High School, http://www.opelikaschools.org/ohs/. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 78.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika, AL; Opelika Middle School; Henry G. Clift High School; Johnson, Judge Frank; J.W. Darden High School; Carver Elementary School; Jeter Elementary School; Desegregation; Civil Rights Era; Green v. New Kent County, VA;
In 1959, Henry G. Clift High School relocated to a new facility at 1206 Denson Drive and rechristened itself Opelika High School, the institutional name it bore from 1911 to 1918. U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson gave the Opelika city school system an ultimatum in August, 1969 to desegregate and redistribute the black student body of J.W. Darden High School, Carver Elementary School, and Jeter Elementary School. Opelika High School integrated minimally in 1967 as it converted to a “Freedom of Choice” school, thus allowing black or white students to attend voluntarily. After the 1968 US Supreme Court decision in Green v. New Kent County., VA rendered “Freedom of Choice” schools unconstitutional and ordered the dismantling of dual school systems and the creation of systems “without a ‘white’ school and a ‘negro’ school, but just schools.” Because the Denson Drive building was too small to accommodate the influx of black students from Darden (Opelika’s black high school) and the white high school students who opted to stay in public school, the city hastily erected a new high school on Lafayette Parkway in 1972. Since 1972, the Denson Drive building has functioned as Opelika Middle School. The Denson Drive facility housed a segregated high school and a desegregated middle school and today remains a tangible vestige of Jim Crow’s demise in the city.
Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Opelika_Middle_School.JPG Text Sources: Joseph M. Bagley, A Meaningful Reality: The Integration of the Opelika, Alabama City School System, 1965-1972 (MA Thesis, Auburn University, 2007), 40-42. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 78.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika, AL; Henry G. Clift High School; Opelika High School 1911-1918; Padgett, W.J.; Opelika Daily News
In 1918, Henry G. Clift High School opened on the site of the old Opelika High School on the corner of North Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue. Opelika’s city council moved to name the new high school after the town’s mayor. Contractor W.J. Padgett built the facility for $33,000. An Opelika Daily News columnist described the edifice of the structure as “constructed throughout of dark red brick with sandstone, of severe and simple lines,” and marveled at “a grandeur and magnificence that is almost indescribable.” The anonymous columnist also commented on the building’s modern amenities, such as drinking fountains, heating equipment, and overhead lighting in every room. Decades later, the deterioration of Henry G. Clift High School led to plans to erect a new high school building on Denson Drive. In 1959, the board of education began using the building that housed Henry G. Clift High School for forty-one years as Clift Junior High. A stone monument in the front yard of the private residence located at 663 North Eighth Street now marks the site where Opelika High School 1911-1918 and Henry G. Clift High School stood.
Image Source: http://ohsclassof52.bizland.com/id342.html Text Sources: Clift High School, http://ohsclassof52.bizland.com/id342.html. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 78.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika High School 1911-1918; Opelika, AL; Henry G. Clift High School; Lee County High School
In 1911, the Alabama State Legislature allocated a disbursement to fund a public high school in every county in the state. Opelika solicited private funds to meet the state in the middle, and Lee County’s first stand-alone high school, Opelika High School, opened on the corner of North Eighth Street and Seventh Avenue. Elementary and grammar school students remained in the old Opelika Public School building on Avenue A and Seventh Street. In 1914, Auburn High School successfully petitioned the state high school commission to take the county flagship status as the “Lee County’s Public High School” away from Opelika, a decision that resulted in a funding shakeup and some related resentment. In 1916, Opelika Public High School burned down and its students were forced to re-consolidate with the elementary and grammar schools in the building on the corner of Avenue A and Seventh Street. During the 1916-1917 and 1917-1918 school years, due to the amount of students and size of the older building, Opelika High School and Opelika Public School educators were forced to offer classes during extended hours. Opelika High School’s student body transferred to the new Henry G. Clift High School in 1918 upon its completion.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 78.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika, AL; Opelika Public School; Private House Schools; Ware, Mrs. O.W.; Mrs. Gorman; African American Schools; Giddens, Columbus; Hawthorne, L.; Smallwood, R.W.; Opelika Baptist Female College
On November 23, 1869, Opelika citizens petitioned the City Council to create a public high school. A Board of Trustees formed, and in 1873 the Alabama State Legislature empowered the city government to collect taxes to subsidize public education. The Opelika Public School System took almost seven years to initiate operations, primarily attributable to the success of local private schools. By 1880, four public schools opened in the homes of some of Opelika’s citizens. White schools operated in the homes of Mrs. Gorman near Young Lake and Mrs. O.W Ware on Chambers Street. African-American public schools were operated in the homes of Columbus Giddens and L. Hawthorne. When Professor R.W. Smallwood was designated superintendent of Opelika schools in 1887, he reorganized the school system and oversaw the purchase of the facility that previously housed the Opelika Baptist Female College, on the corner of North Ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. His twelve-year superintendancy witnessed an exponential growth in the student body, as enrollment increased from 25 students in 1887 to 200 in 1899. The municipal government originally divided the system into three subdivisions – elementary, grammar, and high schools. In 1902, the city erected Opelika Public School, a three story brick building on the corner of Avenue A and South Seventh Street to house all three programs. The citizenry wanted to build separate facilities to house the high school and the elementary-grammar schools, but a lack of funding inhibited the plan. After the 1911 creation of Opelika High School, Opelika Public School continued to house the elementary and grammar schools. From 1916 to 1918, the building at Avenue A and Seventh Street briefly subsumed the student body from Opelika High School due to a fire that destroyed OHS’s building. After the completion of Henry G. Clift High School, the city’s high school students left Opelika Public School again. Opelika Public School continued to serve elementary and grammar school pupils until 1929, when the student body divided into two new institutions, Northside Elementary School and Southside Elementary School. The structure that housed Opelika Public School no longer exists, and the corner of Avenue A and South Seventh Street is now home to Opelika’s City Hall.
Text Sources: Alexander Nunn, Lee County and Her Forebears (Montgomery, AL: Herff Jones, 1983), 36-37. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 78.
Education; Lee County, AL; Lee-Scott Academy; Lee Academy; Scott Preparatory; Auburn, AL; Private School; Civil Rights Era; Desegregation; White Flight; Presbyterian Day School; Scott, I.J.; Opelika-Auburn News; Nixon, Richard; Reconstruction
Presbyterian Day School, a private academy, was founded in Auburn in 1965 and was renamed Lee Academy several years later. In 1970, a contingent of white Opelikans, displeased with pending implementation of the court-mandated integration of the city school system, founded the private school Scott Preparatory. In a September 3, 1970 Opelika-Auburn News article, Scott Preparatory co-founder I. J. Scott referred to federal desegregation as a “conspiracy” between federal agencies and President Richard Nixon (to whom he referred in the article as “Tricky Dick”) aimed at completing the objectives of the nineteenth-century Reconstruction regimes. The enrollment at both private schools increased as the unconstitutionality of “Freedom of Choice” schools left little doubt that Lee County’s public schools would soon be integrated. From 1967 to 1971 (the period when court orders forced Lee County schools to fully integrate), Lee Academy’s enrollment climbed from 47 to 208. Scott Preparatory’s opening-day enrollment in August 1971 totaled 350 students. The two county private schools merged in 1981 to form Lee-Scott Academy on the site of the old Lee Academy. For many years, neither Lee Academy, Scott Preparatory, nor the combined Lee-Scott Academy enrolled or received applications from black students. However, Lee-Scott Academy is now desegregated; during the 2006-2007 school year, 5 of the 549 students enrolled were African American. Growing enrollment allowed the Board of Trustees to build a new facility, and in 1996 the assimilated private school relocated to its current home at 1601 Academy Drive in Auburn. The academy’s resource base grew during the 1980s and 1990s. In 1984, donations allowed the school to open its first computer lab. Other endowments allowed for the foundation of two others during the 1990s.
Image Source: http://www.aais-schools.org/page.cfm?p=373 Text Sources: Joseph M. Bagley, A Meaningful Reality: The Integration of the Opelika, Alabama City School System, 1965-1972 (MA Thesis, Auburn University, 2007), 67-74, 83. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 78. Lee-Scott Academy: http://www.lee-scott.org/page.cfm?p=505.
Education; Lee County, AL; The Old Rotation; Auburn University; Duggar, J.F.; National Register of Historic Places; Cotton; Legumes; Scientific Experimentation; Auburn, AL
Located on Lem Morrison Drive directly across the street from the Auburn University Parking Services Building, The Old Rotation exemplifies Auburn’s tradition as a bastion of agricultural education. Professor J.F. Duggar established the acre in 1896 as an experiment to determine the benefits of planting winter legumes such as beans or peas as a winter crop cover when cultivating cotton or corn. Duggar successfully demonstrated that winter legumes could offset some of the nitrate depletion inflicted on soil when planting cotton or corn in the same field yearly. The plots planted with winter legumes in the acre consistently yielded more cotton lint than those that lay fallow during those months. The Old Rotation is the third-longest running agricultural experiment and the oldest continuous cotton experiment in the world. In 1988, the National Register of Historic Places added The Old Rotation to its list.
Image Sources: http://www.aaes.auburn.edu/comm/pubs/old%20rotation/plotsoneandtwo.html http://www.kennysmith.org/wordpress/markers/2014/11/13/the-old-rotation/ Text Sources: Auburn University, http://www.ag.auburn.edu/agrn/cotton.htm. Auburn University, Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, http://www.aaes.auburn.edu/comm/pubs/old%20rotation/photos.php.
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn University; Luther N. Duncan Hall; Duncan, Luther N.; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Agricultural Extension Program; Alabama A&M; Auburn, AL
The three-story Georgian-style building located at 322 Mell Street was erected in 1928 for the sole purpose of housing Alabama Polytechnic Institute’s Agricultural Extension Program, the capacity in which in still serves today. Named after Luther N. Duncan, the influential director of the extension program and future API President, the building provided a setting for Alabama’s extension agents to prepare to disseminate cutting-edge scientific techniques to farmers statewide. In 1995, Auburn’s Agricultural Extension merged with the Alabama A&M’s Agricultural Extension Program, to form the consolidated Alabama Cooperative Extension System. Luther N. Duncan Hall also houses the administrative office of Alabama Cooperative Extension System.
Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Duncan Text Sources: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 72, 158. Alabama Cooperative Extension System, http://www.aces.edu/pubs/docs/E/EX-0038/EX-0038.pdf.
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn Junior High School; Auburn, AL; Samford Middle School; Desegregation; Civil Rights Era
From 1931 to 1966, Auburn’s white middle (and elementary) school students operated under the aegis of Auburn High School at 332 East Samford Avenue. During this period, the sub-institution was known as Auburn Grammar School. When Auburn High School opened in 1966, the school on East Samford was renamed Samford Middle School. In 1969, the city school board again renamed the middle school, this time as Auburn Junior High School, the institution’s current title. After the 1970 influx of black high school students to Auburn High School, the newly integrated Samford Middle School took on ninth grade students for three years, and then reverted to serving the fifth through the eighth grades.
Image Source: http://www.realestateinauburn.com/auburn-info/auburn-city-schools-3/ Text Sources: Auburn Junior High School, http://www.auburnschools.org/ajhs/Faculty.html. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 71.
Education; Lee County, AL; Smith's Station, AL; Antebellum Era; Smith's Station School; Smith's Station Elementary School; School Consolidation; Mott's School; Oak Grove School; Prince School; Lee Bullard School; Salem Senior High School
This academic institute, one of the county’s oldest, started out as a log cabin in 1826, near where Smith’s Station Elementary School currently stands. This school never had more than thirty students. Much like the consolidations in the Beulah and Beauregard areas, the one-room schools in the Smith’s Station area began to amalgamate in the late 1910s. The merged schools included Smith’s Station School, Mott’s School, Oak Grove School, Prince School, Lee Bullard, and Salem Senior High.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 69-70.
Education; Lee County, AL; Beulah, AL; Beulah High School; Wallace, K.L.; Pine Grove Methodist Church
Located near Beulah, Pine Grove Academy was founded in the 1870s, next to the land that K.L. Wallace donated to the Methodist church on Lee County Road 262. The school has succumbed to the ravages of time, but the original church site still exists, albeit as a private residence. Pine Grove Methodist Church’s modern facility is located less than a mile from the original church and school site. This tiny county school only covered through the tenth grade. An arsonist attempted to torch Pine Grove Academy three times in the mid-1920s, finally achieving success on the third attempt. The school’s former student body thus consolidated with Beulah High School in 1928.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 69.
Education; Lee County, AL; Mount Sinai School; African American Schools; Lee County Training School; Jones, Janie; Farmville, AL
Adjacent to Mount Sinai Church, Mount Sinai School catered to Farmville’s African-American schoolchildren. Housed in a two-story building, the school operated from 1913 until some undisclosed date during the 1940s. Janie Jones of Opelika taught at the facility for many years. When the Rosenwald-funded Lee County Training School opened in Auburn in 1931, many of Mount Sinai’s students opted to matriculate. Those who graduated from Mount Sinai before the foundation of Lee County Training School progressed no farther than the eighth grade.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 68.
Education; Lee County, AL; Botsford School; Farmville, AL; Earnest, Margaret; Reeder, Elizabeth; Lee County Board of Education
Founded in 1923 near the intersection of Highway 280 and Lee County Road 147, pot-bellied stoves heated this three-room school. This facility, located near the Farmville community, served students from the first to the seventh grades. Former student Margaret Earnest reminiscences revealed that Elizabeth Reeder, one of Botsford’s teachers, boarded with her family. In the 1950s, the County Board of Education closed the school. Today the facility is still used as a polling place and the site of community events like pot-luck suppers.
Education; Lee County, AL; Frog Pond School; Jones Academy; Beulah Academy; Beulah High School; Consolidation of Schools; Holder, S.J; Bradshaw, J.H.
Frog Pond School, also known as Jones Academy, was on Lee County Road 279 near the intersection with Lee County Road 259. Professors S.J. Holder and J.H. Bradshaw instructed students at Frog Pond around the turn of the twentieth century. Frog Pond closed when its student body consolidated with Beulah Academy and other schools to form Beulah High School in 1928.
Education; Lee County, AL; Mount Moriah School; Rosenwald Schools; Rosenwald, Julius; African American Schools; Auburn, AL; Chewacla State Park; Lee County Board of Education; Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church
Located on Wrights Mill Road in close proximity to the entrance of Chewacla State Park, the Mount Moriah Rosenwald School was founded in or around 1932. The one-room school functioned for around thirty years, until the Lee County Board of Education scheduled the closing of the ramshackle building. In 1961, the school’s twenty-six students attended classes in a facility with a leaking roof, shattered windows, rotten floorboards, and no sanitation. A corrugated iron outhouse awaited young ladies in need of a freshen-up; boys were expected to utilize Mother Nature’s facilities. A lack of indoor plumbing forced teachers and students to fetch clean drinking water from almost a mile away. Sears C.E.O. Julius Rosenwald donated $275 to help establish the school, but the local African-American community raised $403 and the county government subsidized $100 of the construction. After the razing of the school, African-American Baptists in Auburn founded the Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church on the site of the old Rosenwald School.
Text Sources: “Mount Moriah School,” Fisk University Rosenwald Fund Card Database, http://rosenwald.fisk.edu/?module=search.details&set_v=aWQ9MzIw&school_county=Lee&school_state=AL&button=Search&o=0 Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes, and Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012), 58-59.
Education; Lee County, AL; Little Zion School; Opelika, AL; African American Schools; Tuskegee, AL; Owens, Gladys
Formerly located 4.5 miles south of Opelika on Highway 51, Little Zion School serviced Lee County African-American students starting around the turn of the century. Gladys Owens, a teacher from Tuskegee, commuted to Little Zion School to teach classes from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 67.
Education; Lee County, AL; Pepperell Village School; Opelika, AL; Pepperell Manufacturing Company; Textile Production; Henry G. Clift High School
A factory community appeared after the opening of Pepperell Manufacturing Company’s Opelika textile mill in 1925. A school founded in the new neighborhood under the aegis of the county school system served the first- through sixth-grade students of white mill workers. Sometime in the 1930s, the school added seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade curricula. Children in the community too old to attend Pepperell Village School were zoned for Henry G. Clift High School.
Image Source: http://ohsclassof52.bizland.com/id321.html Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 43.
Education; Lee County, AL; Loachapoka Academy; Loachapoka, AL; Antebellum Era; Yarborough, John Fletcher; Leftwitch, America Walton; Loachapoka High School
John Fletcher Yarborough established this one-room educational facility in 1854. He became the school’s first principal, while his wife, America Walton Leftwich, taught music. Contemporary Loachapoka High School resides on the site of the old academy, located roughly five miles west of Auburn on Lee County Road 61.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 39.
Education; Lee County, AL; Beauregard High School; Beauregard, AL; Beauregard, Pierre G.T.; Private Academies; Whatley School; Thompson School; Hopewell School; Hinson School; Parker's Crossroads School; Dorsey School; Sanford High School
In 1923, several rural one-room schools (including Whatley, Thompson, Hopewell, Hinson, Parker’s Crossroads, and Dorsey schools) in the vicinity of present-day Beauregard, AL consolidated to form the Whatley School. The school at Parker’s Crossroads was established in 1907 and occupied the current site of Providence Baptist Church on Lee County Road 166. In August 1928, the school was renamed in honor of CSA General P.G.T. Beauregard. The remodeled school still stands on Alabama Highway 51 approximately seven miles south of Opelika. After sixteen years of delaying with compliance to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling, Beauregard High School finally integrated with nearby Sanford High School. The former black high school now functions as Sanford Junior High School, Beauregard’s community middle school.
Image Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauregard_High_School Text Sources: Alexander Nunn, Lee County and Her Forebears (Montgomery, AL: Herff Jones, 1983), 110-111. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000) 37-38.
Education; Lee County, AL; Union Grove School; Chewacla, AL; Private Academies; Antebellum Era; Mitchell, William M.; Methodist Church
Formerly the lone educational institution in the community of Chewacla, this tiny log cabin Christian school was built around 1840 run for two years by the Reverend William M. Mitchell. The one-room facility was located near the Methodist church on Lee County Road 391.
Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 36.
Education; Lee County, AL; Trinity Male High School; Trinity Female High School; Browneville, AL; Salem, AL; Marshall's Hill, AL; McGreen, James
One of Lee County’s first academic institutions opened in the now-defunct community of Browneville in 1837. The school lay four miles south of the modern-day unincorporated community of Salem, AL, near Marshall’s Hill. James McGreen founded the schools and served as principal.
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn University; Wittel Dormitory; Alabama Polytechnic Institute; Colonial Revival Style; Wittel, Samuel S.; Auburn, AL
Located at 205 South Gay Street, Wittel Dormitory represents an example of the colonial revival architectural style. Built in the early 1900s as the private residence of Samuel S. Wittel, the building first served as a boarding facility for professional women employed in Auburn and the private residence of the Wittel family. After the post-World War II enrollment spike at Alabama Polytechnic Institute, the university purchased the building to serve as a dormitory for the steadily increasing female portion of the student body.
Image Source: http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/hist/3970/ Text Source: The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 25.
Education; Lee County, AL; Beulah, AL; Beulah High School; Little, Franklin; Beulah Academy; School Consolidation; Pine Grove Academy; Marshall Lee Academy; McCollum Academy; Blanton Academy; Mechanicsville School; Frog Pond School; Williams, Goodwin
Under the management of Professor Franklin Little, Beulah Academy opened its doors in November 1894. In 1928, the Lee County Board of Education passed a motion to erect a consolidated first through twelfth grade school in Beulah. Beulah Academy, Pine Grove Academy, Marshall Lee, McCollum, Blanton, Mechanicsville, Frog Pond, and several other preexisting smaller schools were absorbed into the new Beulah School. Mr. Goodwin Williams of Beulah donated ten acres to the Board of Education for the all-brick facility, which cost roughly $40,000. Beulah High School was leveled in 1976 to make way for a modernized air-conditioned facility with lighted football fields and tennis courts on the same site.
Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beulah_Alabama_Beulah_High_School.JPG Text Source: Alexander Nunn, Lee County and Her Forebears (Montgomery, AL: Herff Jones, 1983), 99-101.
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika Baptist Female College; Opelika, AL; Opelika Baptist Church; Langham, J.J.
Opelika Baptist Church established a school in 1873. Local members of the denomination opened the Baptist Female College inside Opelika Baptist Church and named Professor J.J. Langham as principal. It later moved to a new two-story brick building located on the corner of North Ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. The Baptist Female College only operated for two years, but the school building owners later leased and eventually sold the property to the public school system. No two-story brick building stands at any of the modern-day four corners at North Ninth Street and Fourth Avenue. Three corners sport private residences, and the fourth contains a vacant, elevated, well-maintained grass lot.
Text Source: Alexander Nunn, Lee County and Her Forebears (Montgomery, AL: Herff Jones, 1983), 35.
Opelika Male School and Opelika Female Academy
Education; Lee County, AL; Opelika Male School; Opelika Female Academy; Antebellum Era; Opelika, AL; Freeman, Rev. J.S.; Bowen, Mrs. E.C.; Private Academies
After Opelika’s 1854 town incorporation, citizens concerned with the educational prospects of the hamlet’s youth opened several private academies. Two of the early private schools were the Opelika Male School and the Opelika Female Academy, both founded in 1859. Rev. J.S. Freeman served as the first headmaster of the male school, and Mrs. E.C. Bowen administered the female school as principal.
Education; Lee County, AL; Gold Hill School; Chambers County; Robertson, Nathaniel; Gold Hill Methodist Church
Located in northwestern Lee County, the Gold Hill community coalesced during the mid-1830s. Originally located in Chambers County, the settlement fell within Lee County’s boundaries after its 1866 inception. Resident Nathaniel Robertson donated land near the Gold Hill Methodist Church for the establishment of a schoolhouse around 1870. Although no building remains today, when Gold Hill School existed it lay across Lee County Road 93 from the Methodist church. The school served the small community for several years, but closed due to a lack of students. The school reopened in 1915, but again ceased operations in 1922.
Text Sources: Alexander Nunn, Lee County and Her Forebears (Montgomery, AL: Herff Jones, 1983), 21-23. The Heritage of Lee County Book Committee, The Heritage of Lee County, Alabama (Clanton, AL: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000), 36.
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn, AL; Lee County High School; Hudson, Belas; Quinn, I.T.; Parrish, J.A.; Northside Grammar School
In 1914, the city of Auburn successfully petitioned the Lee County Board of Education to strip Opelika’s high school of the title “Lee County High School” and bequeath that distinction to a new high school in Auburn. Auburn provided seven acres for the new two-story brick edifice school, which was built by contractor Belas Hudson for $10,400. Lee County High School opened its doors in August 1914 with an enrollment of seventy eighth- through eleventh-grade students. Lee County High School’s first principal, I.T. Quinn, was quickly succeeded by the legendary J.A. “Fessor” Parrish, one of Auburn historian George Petrie’s students. He served as principal of the institution from 1915 until 1946. In 1931, a schoolhouse accommodating all twelve primary and secondary grades opened on Samford Avenue, and the old Lee County High School was used as a recreation center. In 1948, the city began using the old building as a grammar school. Northside Grammar School closed in the early 1950s in the wake of the founding of several other public elementary schools in Auburn. The building functioned as a recreational center until 1973, when the city finally demolished it.
Image Source: http://www.auburnschools.org/ahs_band/photos/biga.html Text Source: Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes, and Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012), 53-54.
Education; Lee County, AL; Auburn Public School; Auburn, AL; Little, Charles; Gilded Age
In 1899, Auburn Mayor Charles Little and the town council appropriated bonds of $6,000 to build a large public schoolhouse. The 74x58 ½ foot building included a 40x70 foot auditorium on the top floor. Amenities included wood and coal pot-bellied stoves, a packed-dirt playground with no equipment or rides, and an outdoor privy strategically shielded by shrubbery. The absence of a cafeteria ensured that students brought their own lunches. The coeducational institute offered curriculum-based instruction for eleven grades and a high school diploma. After the city built a separate high school in 1914, Auburn Public School remained standing as the seven-grade grammar school until its 1931 demolition.
Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Auburn_High_School_1899.jpg Text Source: Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes, and Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs (Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2012), 51-52.