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  • Jean Harvey, left, whose husband graduated from the Emery Street School in 1960 talks with the Rev. Frances Ramsey who graduated from the school in 1936 Saturday at the Trade Center. Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen

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  • Martha Patton, left, hugs fellow class of 1961 class member Jimmie Luckey during the Emery Street School reunion Saturday at the Trade Center. Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen

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  • Mark Jones takes a group picture for the Emery Street Reunion at the trade Center Saturday. Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen

    Emery St. reunion 1 mlh.jpg

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June 26, 2011

‘That was our place’

Emery Street School holds reunion

Rachel Brown rachelbrown@daltoncitizen.com

On June 2, 1967, Doris O’Neal and the other 20 or so students in the last class to graduate from Emery Street School climbed into the back of a pickup truck filled with hay bales and headed for Jefferson Farm in Tunnel Hill for a celebratory picnic.

“We used to really have what you’d call ‘old’ type fun,” O’Neal recalled. She and other former “Emerites” met on Saturday for a once every two years reunion to share memories of their school days and discuss ways to preserve and promote the old building as the multi-cultural Emery Center, which focuses on paying tribute to local blacks’ achievements.

The all-black school was founded in 1886 and served students of all ages through high school. Not until 1967 were black children for the first time given an option of going to an integrated Dalton High School. By 1968, the school was closed.

That last class of 1967 hosted this year’s reunion.

New alumni member and volunteer public relations guru Dionna Reynolds became emotional as she described how much the Emery Center meant to her. Reynolds said she went to elementary school in the Emery Center building when it was still being used as City Park School in the 1980s. Now, when children on tours see the center’s historical displays depicting a racially segregated Dalton, they are confused, she said.

They ask questions about the era: Why did blacks and whites have to drink from separate fountains? Was the drinking water different? Why did skin color matter if you can’t help how you look?

“It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now,” Reynolds said, “but all we can do is present what happened.”

The Emerites had the Cheetahs as their mascot, and their school colors were blue and white. The Emery Street School was the first public school in Dalton, formed shortly before Dalton Public Schools received its charter.

Once the school was converted into an African American heritage and multi-cultural center, it was filled with artifacts, newspaper clippings, old letters, period clothing and other memorabilia that traces blacks’ heritage beginning in Africa, through the War Between the States and the Civil Rights movement and to the present day.

Those who went to school at the center, or who have connections there in some way, tell stories that fill the writings and photographs with personal meaning.

Reynolds, who is an alumni of Savannah State University, grew excited as she stood in a large room in the building and gestured to a picture of Richard R. Wright, a black Daltonian who was the first president of the university when it opened in 1891.

Betty Baker and Anna Harris recalled going to school together before integration. Emery served children from all over Whitfield County, several alumni said, and some from the Chatsworth area.

“We rode the bus from Cohutta to Dalton,” Baker said, adding that they made stops in Varnell where no blacks lived. “Sometimes people were ugly to us, but we made it.”

“Always had to sit in the back,” interjected Harris.

“Well, that was our place,” Baker said other Emerites laughed understandingly. “... I’m glad we don’t have to go through that anymore.”

Downstairs in the “Military Room,” Dalton resident Tennie Dwight points to an unframed picture of her husband. Lance Cpl. William “Bill” L. Dwight was 21 when he was killed in Da Nang, Vietnam, from a missile wounds to his head and chest while on patrol.

“He was the first black guy (from Dalton) killed in the Vietnam war,” she said.

Don Madden, a 1957 graduate of Emery, stood alongside the green Army uniform he had donated to the center after retiring as a colonel in 1990. He had three tours in Vietnam.

Bob Brown said he taught French and English at Emery in the 1960s before coming to Dalton High School where he taught for 33 years.

“I come back every time (for reunions) because it’s good to see the old students and teachers,” he said. “The number is progressively shrinking.”

Emery Center director Curtis Rivers said there are several initiatives under way to draw more attention to the center. Among them are coming up with a fundraiser for the center and creating a website. His wife, historian Patricia Rivers, said she’s working to get more streets at West Hill Cemetery named after historical black Daltonians.

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