Carver “Colored” School

Erected with the funds from the Separate School fund was the Carver “Colored” School of Hominy. Costing around $20,000 the new buff brick, L-shaped single-story building included four rooms, a gym/auditorium with a stage. It was to replace a two-room frame building that previously provided education for the African American community in the city. The name is thought to have been given to honor George Washington Carver, a famous African American scientist. The faculty hired consisted of Principal G.W. Tilmon, Mrs. Tilmon and Miss I.T. Corbett, all were in charge of providing the best education to the eighty-five students enrolled. A few years after being built the school received benefits from the WPA Hot School Lunch Project that aimed at providing children with soups, stews, dried fruit and puddings were just some of the items.

During the 1950s the historic Brown v. Board of Education case changed the entire way that public schools treated African American students, realizing that the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling of  ‘separate but equal’ was deemed not to be true. All public schools in the United States were told to desegregate and work on integrating students K-12. This resulted in the Carver Colored School closing as a separate facility and the board voted to use the building as an integrated Junior High.

“When Peter and I arrived in Hominy driving our 1929 Ford, one volunteer remained on the project, Greg Zwettler. We moved in with him and started working on developing the Carver Center. My husband was attacked and threatened with serious harm in December as we were living on the Colored side of town” said Lynda, a VISTA worker that helped create the project. It served the community up until 1979 when a new Hominy Middle School was built to accommodate the growing population of kids in the city.

For a few decades after the building was used for various other activities and educational purposes including a head start facility. It finally fell abandoned and became the local party place for teens that vandalized and destroyed every window and object within it. The neglected structure became a danger even experiencing a fire and it was finally demolished leaving only the concrete foundation and pictures as a memory of what used to be.

Gallery Below of Carver School

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