      Morris Collins,Warrensburg, MO |
| Morris
Collins, a longtime public school art teacher and current UCM art
instructor, is president of the Howard School Preservation Association. He stands near the front door to Howard School From the blog link below by |
Howard School (Warrensburg, Missouri)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Historic Howard School)
Howard School
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| Location: | 400 W. Culton St., Warrensburg, Missouri |
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| Coordinates: | 38°45′51″N 93°43′32″WCoordinates: 38°45′51″N 93°43′32″W |
| Area: | less than one acre |
| Architect: | Newcomer, John; Lowe, William |
| Architectural style: | Late Victorian, three room T-shaped |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: | 02000046[1] |
| Added to NRHP: | February 14, 2002 |
The Howard School was built in 1888 and is the second-oldest surviving African American school in the state of Missouri. It was closed in 1955. The currently vacant building sits on Culton Street in Warrensburg, Missouri. The school was officially entered in the National Register of Historic Places on February 14, 2002.
History
The Howard School had its beginning in 1867, when Cynthia Ann Reed Briggs and the Rev. M. Henry Smith from the American Missionary Association
purchased a Lot 14 in Rentch’s Addition in Warrensburg for the sum of
$100.23. Funding for this lot and subsequent school building was
accomplished with African American assistance alone. The new one-room,
32'x24' frame building cost $1,001.90 and when half-completed, accepted assistance from the Freedmen's Bureau
in the amount of $800 to finish the structure. Grateful for the
assistance, the school’s sponsors decided to call it Howard School, in
honor of General Oliver O. Howard,
Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. The Howard School was the newly established Warrensburg School District's first school building, opening
in August, 1867. Rev. M. Henry Smith was named by the School Board to
take charge of the city’s black schools and served as principal and
teacher in the school. In 1871, Smith resigned his post to become the
first President of Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri’s first African American institution of higher learning.
The current building came in to existence as a result of the success
of the first Howard School. Attendance grew from an average daily
attendance of 45 black students in 1867 to well over 100 students by
1870. After renting space in several buildings on the west side of town
to help accommodate the exploding black student population, and prodding
from the black community and a few vocal citizens, the Board of
Education, on May 21, 1888, approved plans for the construction of a new
school building consisting of three rooms, each the size of the first
school building (32'x24'), to provide for the educational needs of
Warrensburg’s black school children. The cost to the district was $1605.
As more students successfully completed instruction in lower grades,
demands for more advanced coursework increased. Two years of high school
courses were added initially. In 1929, the eleventh grade was added,
followed by the twelfth grade a little later. In May 1932, Lillian lnez
Visor became the first student to receive a diploma for the four-year
high school program. When the State Department of Education adopted new
requirements for the accreditation and classification of school in 1948,
Howard School could not meet the new higher standards. After failing
twice to secure approval for a bond issue that would have upgraded the
Howard School, The Warrensburg School Board voted to discontinue the
school’s high school program. They agreed to transport any qualified
African-American high school student to CC Hubbard High School located
28 miles to the east in Sedalia. The school continued solely as a grade school until its closing in 1955 as a result of the integration of schools in America.[2]
Restoration
The Howard School Preservation Association has developed a mission statement, filed Articles of Incorporation with
the state of Missouri, and has been designated as a 501-C tax-exempt
not-for-profit organization by the IRS (September 16, 2003). In
addition, an Assessment and Feasibility Study was completed in July 2004
which provides a preservation plan that includes an analysis of the
building and recommendations for restoration as well as long term
maintenance. The Howard School Preservation Association was officially
deeded the property on which the Howard School building is located on
December 22, 2004.
The Shredfred is written and managed by Matt Bird-MeyerLink to Howard School Dream to Save it!
Group Tries To Save Historic Black School
African-Americans Attended Howard School Before Integration
March 24, 2009Submitted by Roger Dick, thanks!
WARRENSBURG, Mo. -- It's been vacant for decades, but one of the oldest schools for African-Americans in Missouri is still standing, and some people are fighting to save it. The Howard School along Culton Street in Warrensburg is a historic landmark. For decades, it was the place where blacks from places such as Holden, Knob Noster and surrounding communities went to school before integration."I came out of a one-room school. This was paradise when I got here, even though this was only three rooms here," said Ernest Collins, who was part of Howard's graduating class of 1947. Collins said the school, which was built in the late 1880s, produced lawyers, doctors, teachers and many other professionals. The school closed shortly after schools were integrated in the 1950s, and over the years it has served as a kindergarten and even a library. Now, the building has boarded-up windows and crumbling paint."I hate to see it like this. Although it was not the best then, but it sure didn't look like it looks now," Collins told KMBC's Marcus Moore. "I'd like to see us get it just like it was before."Jacob Derritt is with the Howard School Preservation Association, which wants to turn the crumbling school into a museum and cultural center.But the association needs financial help, as any work will cost tens of thousands of dollars."We're going to have to save as many pieces as we can and then build it back up," Derritt said. "We believe that one dollar will impact generations to come, and we just need for every American who can hear my voice to help preserve history. One bit at time.""Future generations can find out what you can do if you want to do it," Collins said.To learn more about the Howard School, visit howardschoolfoundation.org.
Copyright 2009 by KMBC.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Initially the school was under the ownership of the American Missionaries. In 1870, ownership transferred to the Warrensburg School District and maintained a first through twelfth grade school program until 1948 when the Howard School closed, and the District bused African American students to the Hubbard School in Sedalia, Missouri. After the Supreme Court decision that abolished racial segregation in schools, the Warrensburg school district integrated its schools in 1955 and used the Howard building as a kindergarten facility. The school district later sold the building to a church.
After the Civil War, in 1865, the Freedman's
Bureau was established to help the former slaves of the United States get
back on their feet. The Howard School was a product of the newly
established Bureau. Oliver Otis Howard was the commissioner of the
Bureau and worked to further the education of blacks. The school
was named after him. The Howard School was built to educate the African-Americans
of Warrensburg, Missouri, and the surrounding areas.
The
new school was built from 1867 to 1868. The 24 x 26 square foot building
was built by Cameron Moore & Co. for $800. But the total cost
for the one-room building came out to be a little over $1,000. At
first, the school was only an elementary school, but a two-year high school
was later added. It expanded over the years to a four-year high school.
On January
21st, 1868, teachers were elected by the board of education. Some
of the first teachers at the Howard School were: J.A. Griffith, J.M. Wilson,
Myra J. Ridley, Annie Grover, and Mrs. B. Brown.
The
first principal of the school was the Reverend Henry Smith. Born
in New York, Smith was a graduate of Oberlin College
in Ohio. He had both academic and theological degrees. Smith
was sent to Warrensburg by the Congressional Church. Instead of just
preaching, Smith was also a teacher at the Howard School. Although
he was very successful here, he left to become the President of the Lincoln
Institute (now university) in Jefferson City. The Lincoln Institute
was a college founded by African-American Civil War Veterans. G.W.
Swan was Smith's successor.
The
School had limited courses. Felice Hill Gaines taught English and
sewing. She helped the students print their first newspaper.
The newspaper was hand-printed and the local paper also helped. Olive
E. Frear taught intermediate classes and home economics. Fred Frear
taught ninth through the twelfth-grade shop for boys. Ernst
Collins, who attended Howard School from 1943- 1947 said, "In the 40's,
teachers came on a part-time basis to teach classes in art, band and vocal
(music). They were dedicated teachers, but typing was not taught.
For a time, Verlon Ewing ( a local musician and businessman) taught music
after school. He was not paid, and I doubt that he had high school,
but he was a genius when it came to music." Sterling
White Sr., who attended Howard School from the fourth to the tenth grade
said, "I was mad all the time I was in school, because of the way things
were done. We were not allowed to mark on our desks, but, in the
summer, whites traded their broken-down desks for ours. Our books
were bought new, but whites replaced them with their raggedy books.
We had no playground and had to play in the road." Leona
Gray (now Williams-Mackey) walked four and a half miles to the Howard School.
"We didn't know anything about buses in those days," she said. The
school was under the ownership of the American Missionaries in in 1869.
In 1879, the Howard School was under
the ownership of the Warrensburg School District. It stayed as a
first through twelfth-grade school for African Americans until 1948, when
the school district decided the enrollment was too low. They said
there were too few prepared teachers. The Howard School was closed,
and the African American students were bused to the Hubbard School in Sedalia
for school. In 1955, the schools were forced to integrate and the
Howard School was used as a kindergarten. When the school district
had no more use for the Howard school, they sold it to the Jesus Saves
Pentecostal Church of God. This is when the cross was added.
The
Howard School is still standing on Culton Street in Warrensburg.
Efforts are underway to renovate the Howard School, but the cost is $25,000.
The School needs to be in the Register of National Historic Preservation
for any funding from the government. It is thought to be the oldest
surviving colored school started by the Freedman's Bureau. The school
is in poor shape, and needs the funds. Until then, though,
the Howard School is still a place of great importance and significance
in the Warrensburg community.
Bibliography
This page was created by
Lauren, Sarah, Jon, and Tom
Daily Star Journal Dates: 5/15/01, 5/17/33, 3/14/41, 8/28/00 (Mike Greife), and 5/9/36 Lucille D. Gress, Howard School Dream Still Alive at Howard School
The city of Warrensburg erected wayfinding signs some years ago, including signs directing people to Howard School.
Ten years. It’ll be 10 years in November since I wrote about the Howard School in the Warrensburg Free Press. “The entire structure sags as if exhaling after 114 years of use and subsequent disuse,” I wrote in 2002. I’m not sure there’s much breath left. That’s why I reconnected with
Morris Collins, president of the Howard School Preservation Association,
to find out if preservation is still an option.
Morris
Collins, a longtime public school art teacher and current UCM art
instructor, is president of the Howard School Preservation Association.
He stands near the front door to Howard School.
Every time Morris Collins walks into his church, Jesus Saves
Pentecostal Church, he sees the tumble-down back of this old school.
Remnants of a tarp are barely visible, revealing large open sections it
once covered. Scrap pieces of wood cover portions of the back wall, and
daylight streams into the building from all over.
But Mr. Collins remains optimistic.
“You have to persevere,” he said. “You have to.”
The school is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, but
that’s not the story. The story of Howard School is the embodiment of
perseverance. Howard School is the second oldest remaining black school in
Missouri. The well-documented history of the building serves as a
painful history lesson in segregation, but it’s more of a testament to
the power and uniting force of education.
The
back wall of Howard School reveals wide open sections. The workhorse
for the preservation association's fundraisers, a large barbecue grill,
is parked behind the school.
It was built in 1888 and still sits at 328 W. Culton St. in Old Town
Warrensburg, just across from Blind Boone Park, which was once
segregated for black people.
Black families came together to raise part of the money necessary to
build the one-room Howard School in 1867 – the first school in the newly
formed Warrensburg district. Attendance escalated and a three-room
building replaced the one-room school 21 years later.
The black community rallied in the face of segregation because they
wanted an education. The Howard School Preservation Association rallied
10 years ago to save the old school with a plan to convert two of the
original classrooms into a museum and cultural center.
Well, progress is slow.
The building is still in about the same shape it was 10 years ago. A
back section of the school, which was added in the 1940s, was torn down.
The church deeded the property to the association, which has since
achieved nonprofit status. That opened up opportunities for state tax
credits and grants, but these have yet to materialize.
Mostly, the group organizes annual barbecues and other fundraisers.
Collins said they are a few barbecues away from having enough money to
replace the roof.
“If we get a roof up and stop the rain from getting inside, then we
can get inside and reconstruct the floor and hopefully stabilize the
walls,” he said.
Collins said $250,000 would be a good starting point toward
rehabilitation, and $1 million should make it a destination location for
visitors to our town.
The building looks hopeless, but it’s encouraging to hear that the group isn’t giving up.
“The original dream is still alive,” Collins said.
The preservation group connected with a banker from Kansas City a
couple of years ago to promote the school in the Kansas City area. The
group recently connected with Travois, Inc., a Kansas City company that
promotes American Indian housing and economic development.
“I don’t know where that might go,” Collins said. “We’re meeting with them possibly sometime in the coming month.”
How Travois fits with Howard School I’m eager to see. It appears that
Plan B for Howard School is to convert the building into some type of
living space, which is what happened to the C.C. Hubbard High School in
Sedalia. Black students were bused to Hubbard after high school classes
ceased at Howard School around 1948.
“Our goal is to turn this into a museum. That option (apartments) is
on the table, though, because I’ve been approached with that idea. We
could get the money just like that,” Collins said, snapping his fingers.
It would be a shame to see Howard School become an apartment building.
Howard School offers an important history lesson, one that speaks to
the power of the human spirit and the ongoing struggle for social
justice. We cannot lose sight of this lesson or we are doomed to repeat
our mistakes.
“It represents what this town, I think, represents,” Collins said.
“Education has always held a big place in the community of Warrensburg.
And so, in that same vein, the African Americans that settled here had
the same focus. They could easily have let that go and they didn’t.”
For more information or to volunteer or make a donation, visit
www.howardschoolfoundation.org/home/
The current Howard School Preservation Association board is: Morris
Collins, Ernest Collins, Virdia Stevens, Ronelle Watts, Stevie Hardin,
Robin Grice, Reshelle Rucker, Christa Collins, Jamie Levine-Jordan and
junior board member Jaason Levine.
A 120-year-old Warrensburg schoolhouse is still separate and not equalBy Scott Wilson
The signs help.
On the western edge of Warrensburg, Missouri, past Sunset Hill Cemetery and south of West North Street, new-looking markers point out the easy turns that lead to the Howard School.
Spotting the weather-beaten landmark isn't hard once you're on West Culton Street. Perched atop a slim tract of patchy grass that slopes into a wide gravel lot, the old building must be the place. Nothing else in sight is boarded up and covered on its southern face by flapping blue tarp. No other structure on this quiet residential strip remembers Reconstruction.
But the signs help. They demonstrate that Warrensburg at last knows the value of the second-oldest surviving black school in Missouri.
Still, even though the Howard School has immeasurable worth, the cost of making it postcard-ready — shoring up the sandstone foundation, preserving the rotted walls, leveling the buckled floor, adding a roof — will be many, many times what its backers have ever been able to bank.
Next door to the Howard School, inside the Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church where he preaches, Morris Collins sits at a table and considers the challenge ahead. His church bought the vacant Howard School in 1969 and held services there until the mid-1980s. He never attended Howard, but he is president and chairman of the Howard School Preservation Association. In front of him now are poster-board mock-ups of future museum exhibits: photocopies of aging Howard class pictures and graduation portraits. The material is fascinating, despite the low-budget presentation.
"We want to have listening stations, video, a place for people to tell their stories and for people to hear them," he says. "We've captured some of that but not nearly enough of it, where they actually tell their own stories."
At first, he says, others weren't so eager to examine the Howard School's story.
"In the past, it was as though people wanted to close the door on that history. Like segregation, the attitude was, let's forget it happened. We had to convince the public that it was a viable thing to do. And we've come a long way."
Getting onto the National Register of Historic Places took almost a decade — time spent generating excitement about the idea, then researching the history, then enlisting help with the application. Coaxing grant money now is harder than ever. And preventing the Howard School from falling further into decay becomes a more expensive prospect with every cold snap, rainstorm and heat wave.
If you stand outside long enough in this part of town — the west side, the section settled by African-Americans — you will see someone wave at Morris Collins.
Morris will wave back. Recognition, warmth, understanding — these things pass between the 62-year-old pastor, school-board president and retired art teacher and the people who know him.
Some of these people, the ones who honk their horns and slap the outside of their car doors when they roll by and see him on the street, will go to the annual Howard School fundraising barbecue in July. They will remember last summer's barbecue and last fall's fundraising banquet. He will thank them — again. And because every Lincoln penny pledged to the salvation of the Howard School counts, he will remind them to remind someone else to find the school's nondescript Web site and donate — a dollar, he'll say, even just a dollar.
So far, the group's largest single donation has been a 2003 check from the Warrensburg Rotary Club for $15,000, and the nonprofit's bank account hasn't held more than $20,000 at any one time. "When we get money," Collins says, "we spend it."
Volunteers spent the summer of 2005 taking apart an unsound 1948 addition to the school before a contractor, for safety reasons, finished the job over the next three years. Hauling away rotted wood and broken concrete and paying the contractor cost almost $10,000. That, Collins says, was Phase 1. Now that only the original 1888 building remains, the search is on for contractors to replace the roof and then work on the foundation and the floor. There will be estimates, permits, expenses.
Remember how Barack Obama raised money, Collins will tell supporters. There are 6 billion people in the world. If just a million of them gave just a dollar..
The Howard School Preservation Association has about $8,000 right now. That's more than Warrensburg will budget in 2009 for its own citywide preservation efforts.
"We now have a preservation group, but they don't have a pot of money to dole out to private entities," says Barbara Carroll, Warrensburg's director of community development. Since the Warrensburg Historic Preservation Commission's revival in 2005 (an effort in the 1990s sputtered out before it could get going), the budget has been small — less than $10,000 a year — and has been devoted to studies and internal organization rather than awards or grants.
"When the Howard School started getting legs, five or six years ago, the city didn't have a historic preservation body," she says. "The city sent me as a representative to the Howard meetings, and we reviewed its grant applications. Whether we would offer money to it in the future if asked, I don't know."
In Warrensburg, though, things have a way of taking care of themselves. Carroll cites projects, such as an abuse shelter and the Kansas City-affiliated Warrensburg chapter of the Boys & Girls Clubs, as examples of initiatives led privately and established without municipal funding.
"The Howard School is very grassroots," Carroll says. It has its place on the National Register, not because the city lent assistance, she explains, but because the foundation pursued the status.
"I think the city has always been excited that a group of citizens wants to do this," she says. "Down the road, tourism would be a nice ancillary benefit, but we're most interested in preserving architectural and cultural resources and increasing awareness in the community that we have these resources."
Hence, the signs.
State and federal funding for projects like the Howard School have dried up in recent years. Mark Miles, director of the State Historic Preservation Office, says Missouri is a model of how tax credits can motivate the redevelopment of historic properties — as long as those properties are for-profit enterprises.
"For example, loft conversions in Kansas City and around the state have made great use of historic rehabilitation tax credits," he says. In Missouri, that means a state tax break of 25 percent on top of a 20 percent federal cut. "But house museums and nonprofits that have no tax liability can't use them, and we don't have a funding mechanism to help privately held nonprofit rehab projects.
"It's going to be tricky," he says of the Howard School's rehab. "But I think any building can be renovated. It's a matter of money and finding people to do the work. We wish them well."
The project does look daunting, agrees Delia Gillis, director of the Africana studies program at the University of Central Missouri. "It's expensive, and it does make you wonder if we're wasting our time. But it's just really, really important. It's one of only two Freedmen's Bureau schools in the state that still stands. And it emerged from a diverse effort that included not just African-Americans but the Methodist church. Just for that, for the history of cooperation alone, it would be worth saving.
"We do these things piecemeal," Gillis continues, "because we don't fund these things in our society. Unless you have a Helzberg who can write a check, you have to work in phases with small grants. This is the only way I've seen things done. I've never been part of a project where someone writes one big check. In some ways, the process in which the school will be restored will parallel the way in which it was founded: collaboration and cooperation."
Near the southeast wall of the original building, a thin strand of pipe pokes up to hold a shallow basin and a still-gleaming metal hood — a drinking fountain, the kind that never had a sign over it reading "Colored" because no white students were there to need water of their own.
Collins estimates that finishing the next phase will cost about $250,000. His calculations are based on a 2004 feasibility study conducted by the Kansas City preservation consultants Susan Richards Johnson & Associates, Inc. That study alone cost about $15,000, about half of which came from a grant from Miles' office.
The study cautions, "The building in its present condition is stable but precarious ... a collapse of the structure could be sudden and without much warning. ... The building can be salvaged, but the construction sequence will be complicated."
Still, Collins believes his group can pay for finishing exterior work on the school by the end of this year. This summer, he says, it's all about the roof.
There's a pause in conversation as a starling dives into a hole up high in the old façade. All eyes move off the building and back to the street in time to see a man on a children's bicycle, his knees visible well above the handlebars, coast down the grade in front of the building.
"I know that boy," says Ernest Collins, Morris' third cousin and the foundation's treasurer.
The boy has a mustache. He looks about 30. The bike rider glances at the school and the people standing on its balding lawn, then aims the bicycle at a driveway down the street as the hill bottoms out. He steps off, straightens up, looks satisfied, and resumes his Saturday-morning duties outside the house. "I've seen that boy," Ernest says.
Ernest, still trim and imposing in his eighth decade but grandfatherly in his flat cap and iron-weight denim overalls, lets his soft, dry voice trail off before he can call the bike rider a foolish so-and-so.
Because he is in the presence of a reporter today or because he is always in the presence of the Lord, Ernest curbs his tongue. As in: "I could tell you some stories about that so-and-so." Maybe there were harsher words in his Air Force years, or when he worked as an airplane mechanic at Whiteman Air Force Base, or even as Warrensburg's first black city councilman. But probably not.
As Morris and Ernest Collins talk in front of a crumbling symbol of segregated education, people from their small town ease up and down Culton Street and wave without stopping, long since used to seeing the men and the disused building. In the 2000 U.S. Census, Warrensburg's population was 16,340, and about 7 percent of the community claimed African-American heritage. If rebuilding the school remains merely a local concern, it's going to take a lot of barbecues and a lot more than a dollar per person. And to keep the lights on after that, the Howard School will need to draw visitors and resources from all over.
Warrensburg had fewer signs in 1866, a decade after its incorporation. As many Missourians adjusted to the Confederate Army's loss, bandits and opportunists moved in, and authorities troubled themselves little with educating — or even recognizing — the area's black citizens.
At the November 1917 dedication of the city's Odd Fellows Hall, Maj. E.A. Nickerson recalled his introduction to the area:
"The political and racial condition of the place was in a state of civil chaos," he said (according to Ewing Cockrell's homey but authoritative 1918 History of Johnson County, Missouri). "The camp gangs that had followed in the wake of both armies lingered around and about the place ... robbing the people of their property and murdering strangers from other states who came to buy land and settle amongst us. ... They dominated the town in every way and by their criminal, brutal force made Warrensburg an unfit place for human habitation."
A year earlier, an aging Warrensburg settler named William Lowe told the Warrensburg Star-Journal what he found when he arrived from St. Louis after the war (a $12.50 ticket bought a 12-hour ride on a wood-burning train).
"I stopped the first night over in the west part of Old Town. I remember when I got up the next morning I saw a regular procession of Negroes going by and I asked the folks if the whole population were colored folks. They explained to me that there had been a soliders' camp in a field west of town. The soldiers had built a lot of huts for winter quarters and when they left these the Negroes took possession — that's how that section of Warrensburg came to be called 'nigger town' and it is the favorite Negro haunt yet."
Lowe added: "The first school house here was for colored people; it was built in 1867 by the Freedmen's Aid Society." According to Lowe, the Reese School for white students was built in 1868. Lowe built another white school, the Foster School, in 1870.
Cockrell's book spends more than a few words noting the particulars of the Reese and Foster schools, naming their teachers and the school-board members who hired them. But other than including Lowe's passing reference to it, that early chapter on Warrensburg fails to mention the school for blacks, the one named for Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, who administered the funds of the Freedmen's Bureau.
Before the Civil War, in 1847, Missouri had outlawed education for black people. But 20 years later, the American Missionary Association, using funds raised by Warrensburg's black population — a few hundred people — and $800 from the Freedmen's Bureau, put up the county's first school at a cost of $1,001.90. (Between its founding in 1865 and its disbanding in 1870, the Freedmen's Bureau helped support more than 9,000 Freedmen's schools and their 247,000 students.)
Local histories only grudgingly acknowledge that the Reese School went up a year after Howard. The editor of the Warrensburg Standard wrote at the time, "It is a burning shame that our $13,000 school house should hang fire so long, and that the first school house ever completed in this town, should be accomplished through the energy and zeal of the colored people and their friends." Emphasis his. (His humiliation was presumably intensified when, because its original walls were defective, the Reese had to be rebuilt in 1879.)
In 1875, Missouri amended its constitution. The law mandated that any district with a certain number of black children (at first the number was 20, then eight) provide a school for them. But because the census was often controlled by people who had different ideas about how to spend state funds, undercounting the black population was more common than building new schools for black children.
By the mid-1880s, Warrensburg's black population had outgrown the original Howard School, which gave way in 1888 to the building that stands today.
The second Howard housed three classrooms, 32 feet by 24 feet, that were lined, even between the windows, by blackboards. It was a design following standards set by noted schoolroom planner Henry Barnard. The school cost $1,605, and this time the Warrensburg School District helped pay for the construction. The school continued to add rooms and grades until desegregation in 1955 — which altered or ended the careers of many black teachers, who couldn't get jobs in integrated schools.
"Some of our old folks believed in education," Ernest Collins says. "I liked school. I did. My brother hated it, but he graduated." He laughs. "My mother pushed it.
"Teachers, preachers, a doctor — they went to school here. I knew a lawyer. Got too smart for his own good, but that's all right. I went to school with a girl — we started out in the first grade — Sally. When I graduated, I think Sally was still in the seventh grade. She'd come to school religiously when school was starting, then wouldn't come back. She never did get enough credits to get past seventh grade. She'd come to school, and I'd say, 'Uh oh, we got her this time.' Oh, she'd be there. She'd go for a while. Then I kind of lost track of her."
"I always like to hear your stories," Morris tells Ernest.
"I put in 27 years with Toastmasters."
"I don't think a lot of the people today know the story because they don't hear it told," Morris says. "They don't know the background."
Before he moved to Warrensburg and transferred to Howard, where he would graduate with two other seniors in the class of 1947, Ernest attended the East Lynne School in Mt. Olive, a settlement about 12 miles northeast of Warrensburg. That school, built in 1931, was the last in the area to be built for blacks; it closed in 1955, the year after Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.
"I grew up on the west end of town," Ernest says. "White kids, black kids all played together. We did everything together but go to school together. We'd fight, but before the day was over we'd play together again. We swam in the same swimming hole. Now, we didn't play with white girls." He laughs again.
After that relatively integrated upbringing, Ernest graduated from Howard in 1947 and joined the military, which President Truman would integrate a year later. During the two decades that followed, the G.I. Bill paid for him to take classes at Central Missouri State University and earn certification as a heavy-equipment mechanic, the vocation he continued after leaving the service.
For Morris, a generation later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement offered direction but not necessarily answers.
"I was angry," Morris says. "I didn't like being a teenager. I was going through the era when we didn't know who we were. We heard things that indicated that we weren't up to par. My parents did what Martin Luther King said to do: Don't start fights. Be yourself. Don't instigate.
"I can remember being 14 at the height of the civil rights movement, when the school I had to go to didn't want us, and my parents telling me to be quiet and not say anything. No one put his hands on me, but there was the intimidation of not being recognized as a person. It does something to you after a while. If you're not careful, you begin to believe it yourself."
Finally, a teacher gave him some simple advice: "Don't let anybody else define you."
In the four decades since it stopped being an all-black school, Howard was defined by utility, not historic value. For five years, it was a National Guard armory, then the library. An integrated Howard held classes from 1960 to 1965 before the district shuttered it again and auctioned the property. Jesus Saves nailed a cross atop the front gable when it took over the building in 1969, and the rickety wood remains there today, as distressed as the structure it overlooks.
After graduating from Central Missouri State University, Morris became the Warrensburg School District's first black teacher in 1969. Later, he was the district's first black school-board member and the first black president of the board. As with many teachers, Morris has a broader legacy in mind: teaching the value of education itself. For him, the Howard School is its own lesson.
"Seventy-four percent of the African-American kids in the Warrensburg School District right now are below the average of what they should be," he says. "In other words, they're failing.
"And then I see the ones who went to Howard and are still alive. And everyone I know who went there and left went on to make something of themselves. The more I found out about the history of the Howard School, the more I heard people talk about the effect it had on their lives, the more I sat up and wanted to know what went on there to make them want to make something of themselves."
The minister in Morris takes hold as he tells a story.
"Back in 1994," he says, "our church had a national convention in Kansas City, and east of downtown we took food and clothing to one of the projects. A lady who had been around for 30 years said, 'I've watched you do this for years, and they've gotten so used to people doing for them, and that's all they've ever known.' People doing things for them took their strength away. And so when we started this, I wanted African-Americans involved. There are whites in Warrensburg who would take this on. But is that what we want? To sit back once again and let someone else take control?"
No matter who's in charge, though, the effort will need more than an influx of cash. When people in Warrensburg want to pull off something like this, they can: Just across the road to the south of the school isBlind Boone Park, which hums with children at play. Once a blacks-only recreational spot, the park — named for blind ragtime pioneer John William Boone — had languished for years before Warrensburg resident Sandy Irle organized a volunteer group to rebuild it and establish it as a nonprofit. Where weeds once overgrew the land, an enormous sculpture of Boone, its empty eyes lifted to heaven, plays a curving, abstract keyboard and anchors what the park's Web site calls a "sensory walkway." Farther along, there's a "scent garden," a wind harp and a rope walkway for the blind. (The bronze signs include Braille writing and audio stations.) The Web site features a call for ideas for a "multi-use trail" alongside happy photos of Boy Scouts and civic-minded white people remaking the space as a flowered parade float of a place.
It's beautiful, and it all but mocks the stagnant Howard School, the park's neighbor, a block away.
Boone's house in Columbia (though he was raised in Warrensburg, the pianist migrated east for the promise of regular work), having secured its own place on the National Register and a grant from that city, awaits a face-lift, too — and seems likely to get one before the Howard School does.
A musical legacy is an easier sell than a museum dedicated to education's struggle against racism. Yet, Gillis points out, the park complements the school — it shows that its rebuilding is possible. "In June 1954, a month after Brown v. Board of Education, Blind Boone Park opened as a segregated park," she says. "Now the park is an example of how Warrensburg embraces its past and can have redemption. People from all races and backgrounds came together to rebuild a park designed to keep people apart."
And in a town of fewer than 20,000 people, where three other structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and community leaders have paid for a study to find more buildings to protect, the Howard School preservationists will raise money any way they can.
In the church, Morris disappears for a moment into a storage area next to the pulpit. Returning, he lays out an XXL T-shirt printed with smart blue lettering: "Howard School." Next to it, he puts down a brass Christmas-tree ornament commemorating the school. The foundation sold the ornament two years ago to raise money.
"We're not a fly-by-night operation," he says with a gentle chuckle. Twenty-two years after Jesus Saves moved into its new building just behind Howard, and more than 10 years after the first stirring of interest in saving the school's structure, movement remains slow, but optimism is high. There's an African-American in the White House. There's the barbecue next month. The Web site is set up to accept donations. And there is the hope that someday, there will be a museum instead of a sign noting that this was where the Howard School once stood.
Howard School Set For Demolition
May 25, 2013
By DEVIN R. NEGRETE
(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) –
The historic Howard School is scheduled for demolition.
The heavy snow from February was too much for the 1888 structure as the roof collapsed, resulting in the city condemning the building.
The Howard School Preservation Association hoped to restore this former segregated school for black children into a cultural center.
“Our original plans were to restore and rehabilitate the old school building, making it a museum and visitor’s center,” said Morris Collins, the pastor of Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church and board member of HSPA.
Howard School, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, is the second oldest remaining black school in Missouri. It is located next door to the church where Collins is the pastor, at 400 W. Culton St. in Old Town Warrensburg, just across from Blind Boone Park, which was once a segregated park for black people.
The Howard School board met May 17 to discuss the future of the building. That future points to demolition and the creation of a new facility on the old foundation.
The group wants to keep the foundation, stabilize and then restore it. However, the final project was not immediately available.
“There have been signoffs on the disconnections of the phone and electrical circuits to allow a demolition permit,” said Rowland Kitchen, a building official for the city of Warrensburg.
Kitchen said the city has agreed to waive the demolition permit fees.
The association members agreed to salvage what they can from the building and donate those materials to the Johnson County Historical Society.
“They have light fixtures from the building, but so far there’s nothing they will be able to use for the project,” said Lisa Irle, curator for the Historical Society.
Collins said the rebuilding plans include an outdoor playground and memorabilia from the Howard School era.
“The Howard School is one of the oldest remaining buildings yet standing from the era of African American schools built following the Civil War,” Collins said.
The school served the black community until it closed in 1955 when school segregation ended.
“It is also significant to note the Howard School is one of the few Missouri schools built during that time which had documentation linking its early history to each of three principal agencies responsible for the development of black schools in Missouri following the Civil War: The American Missionary Society, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Missouri Department of Education,” Collins said.
Summary: Howard School in Warrensburg, Johnson County, Missouri is significant under Criterion A in the areas of ETHNIC HERITAGE Black and EDUCATION. The Warrensburg School Board erected the building in 1888 as a replacement for an 1867 one room African American school located on the same site. The American Missionary Association had purchased the property in 1867 with funds raised by members of Warrensburg's African American community. The earlier structure, which also was called the Howard School had been constructed with assistance provided by the Freedmen's Bureau. From the beginning, the first Howard School building was too small to accommodate Warrensburg's black students. Eventually the school board acceded to demands that it provide more satisfactory quarters for local African American students and approved construction of the present structure. After its completion in 1888, the frame building was the sole public educational facility in Warrensburg available to African American students during the period of significance. The school closed in 1955 when the Warrensburg schools were integrated following the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1954 decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which outlawed segregation. The experiences of students and teachers at the Howard School exemplified both the hardships and the successes that were commonplace for African Americans in Missouri's segregated educational system. Named in honor of General Oliver Otis Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Howard School is one of the Missouri's oldest remaining African American school buildings. It also is a rare example of a Missouri school with documentation linking its early history to each of the three principal agencies that were responsible for the development of black schools in the state following the Civil War: the American Missionary Association, the Freedmen's Bureau, and the Missouri public school system. The Howard School's founders also had close ties with Missouri's first African American institution for higher learning, the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, later known as Lincoln University. John Newcomer, a draftsman employed by a Kansas City architectural firm, was engaged by the school board to draw up plans for the Howard School. The period of significance begins with the school's completion in 1888 and runs until 1955, the year that the Howard School was closed. The building is in poor condition but remains essentially unchanged from the period of significance and largely reflects its 1888 appearance. As one of Missouri's oldest surviving black schools, the Howard School is an exemplary example of African American public education in post-Civil War Missouri. To a remarkable degree, its well-documented history is a microcosm of the larger story of the struggle by African Americans to attain educational parity in Missouri. For these reasons, it qualifies for listing at a level of state significance. Elaboration: During the Civil War, the American Missionary Association (AMA) assumed an active role in seeking to promote the creation of African American schools in Missouri. The Christian philanthropic organization sent the Reverend George Candee to St. Louis in 1862 to investigate the prospects for establishing black schools there." Initially the AMA concentrated its activities in St. Louis, but in 1864, Candee traveled to western Missouri in search of suitable sites for Freedmen's schools. He identified Warrensburg as promising locality for such a school and urged officials in the AMA's New York headquarters to send a teacher there. 12 The AMA complied, and in January 1865, Cynthia Ann Reed Briggs arrived in Warrensburg to take up the task. The recently widowed Briggs had attended Oberlin College in Ohio, an institution long in the forefront of black education in the United States. Her husband, a Union army surgeon, had recently died from unspecified causes. 13 From the outset, she experienced hostility at the hands of locals opposed to the establishment of a black school. Briggs wrote from Warrensburg that she was in "Dixie Land which I have found by sad experience is not yet the land of the Free or the Home of the Brave."'4 After outlining her problems in a letter to Governor Thomas C. Fletcher, Missouri's chief executive directed local military authorities to protect Briggs at bayonet point if necessary. William Baker, a local newspaper editor, alleged that Mrs. Briggs had "Negro on the brain" and put blacks "above the whites." 15 However, Briggs was not without defenders. S. K Hall, editor of the Warrensburg Standard, lauded her efforts and reported that nearly 100 students had attended her classes in a log structure, known as the McNeil School." Poor health, perhaps exacerbated by the stressful conditions she encountered, prompted Briggs to leave Warrensburg at the close of the school term in June. In her absence Briggs's eager students continued to meet, teaching each other as much as possible. She returned to Warrensburg in November of 1865 and remained there until June of the following year. The McNeil School continued to prosper under her tutelage. In addition to the daytime classes taught by Briggs, the Reverend M, Henry Smith, another 11 Joe M. Richardson, "The American Missionary Association and Black Education in Civil War Missouri." Missouri Historical Review, 69 (July 1975), 437-43. 12 George Candee to George Whipple, August 15, 1864, AMA Archives. 13 Carrie Ann Reed Briggs to George Whipple, August 6, 1864, AMA Archives. 14 Quoted in Richardson, "The American Missionary Association and Black Education in Civil War Missouri," 443. 15 /6;W.,444. 16 Warrensburg Standard, June 17, 1865
agent of the AMA, offered night classes for those during her turbulent stay in Warrensburg, Briggs often relied on the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen's Bureau) for protection and support." Congress created this federal agency in 1865 to provide relief and assistance to blacks and whites whose lives had been disrupted by the Civil War. The Bureau made the education of freedmen and women a major priority. Between its founding in 1865 and its dissolution in 1870, the Bureau helped support more than 9000 freedmen's schools with 247,000 students. In Warrensburg, as elsewhere, AMA officials looked to the Freedmen's Bureau for help in underwriting the costs of their educational efforts in Missouri.20
The McNeil School building, where Briggs first held classes, had been constructed on land abandoned by a Confederate sympathizer, who apparently had fled Warrensburg during the war. By the spring of 1866, the absentee owner was back in Warrensburg petitioning the court for the return of his property. When she returned to Warrensburg in the fall of 1866, following a summer hiatus, Briggs reported that the rebel owners had reclaimed both the house and the ground that the McNeil School had occupied.2 ' At the time the claim against the school was first filed, local authorities had assured Briggs that the school would be moved to a permanent location as soon as a suitable place could be found.22 After Warrensburg officials failed to make good on their promise, Smith and Briggs launched a campaign to build a new black school in the town. On June 1, 1867, the American Missionary Society purchased Lot 14 in Rentch's Addition in Warrensburg for the sum of S100.23. According to Briggs, "with the blacks' assistance alone [she and Smith] succeeded in getting a new lot costing] $100.00 and a new larger house more than half completed."23 Notwithstanding this remarkable fundraising effort in Warrensburg's black community, the available monies proved insufficient to complete the school. When Briggs left Missouri in 1867 for the last time, the new building remained unfinished. Briggs briefly taught at the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City before returning to her home in the East. Despite the difficulties she had experienced in Missouri, Briggs maintained an interest in black education and continued to offer her services to both the AMA and the Freedmen's Bureau. 24 Not long after Briggs's departure, the Freedmen's Bureau stepped forward with an offer to furnish the $800 needed to finish the structure. Grateful for the assistance, the school's sponsors decided to call it Howard School, in honor of General Oliver Otis Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau. The one-room frame building, which measured 32'x24' and cost $1,001.90 to build, was ready for occupancy in August 1867. The Freedmen's Bureau retained title to the building. 25 When the Howard School opened its doors, M. Henry Smith, recently named by the Warrensburg School Board to take charge of the city's black schools, served as the principal and teacher at the school. The Howard School was the newly established Warrensburg School District's first school building no thanks to its efforts. The Reese School intended for white students was not occupied until later that same year. That structure, which cost $13,000, was located at the northwest corner of Market and Warren streets. 26 In announcing the completion of the Howard School, the editor of the 17 C.A.R. Briggs to Samuel Hunt, January 29, 1866, AMA Archives. 18 C.A.R. Briggs to Samuel Hunt, July 2, 1866, AMA Archives, and The History of Johnson County, Missouri (Kansas City, Mo.: Kansas City Historical Company, 1881), 433-34. 19 S. K. Hall, to Samuel Hunt, November 10, 1865, and C.A.R. Briggs to Samuel Hunt, July 2, 1866, AMA Archives. 20 Joe M. Richardson, "Freedmen's Schools," in David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman, The Encyclopedia of Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 490-91; and Gary R. Kremer, James Milton Turner and the Promise of America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 25-26. 21 C.A.R. Briggs to M.E. Strieby, August 15, 1867, AMA Archives. 22 C.A.R. Briggs to Samuel Hunt, April 31 (sic). 1866, AMA Archives. 23 C.A.R. Briggs to M.E. Strieby, August 15, 1867, AMA Archives. 24 Ibid. 25 Warrensburg Standard, May 3, July 26 and August 2, 1867. 26 History of Johnson County, Missouri (1881), 432-33.
Warrensburg Standard wryly observed "it is a burning shame that our $ 13,000 school house should hang fire so long, and that the first school house ever completed in this town, should be accomplished through the energy and zeal of the colored people and their friends." 27 From the time of its construction in 1867, the original Howard School building was too small for the task of educating Warrensburg's African American youth. School Board minutes dated April 2, 1867, when plans for the new school were still under consideration, show that M. Henry Smith had reported an average daily attendance of forty-five black students. By November of 1869, that number had Warrensburg School District been used as a classroom during the week and for religious services on Sundays. Grade 1 continued to meet at the Howard School. Temporary classroom space was also leased for a time in an old Baptist Church located on the southwest corner of Main and West Market Streets. 28 In other parts of Johnson County, there were also black schools. The author of the 1881 history reported that, "ten [colored] schools are kept open on an average of seven months in the year." 29 Smith resigned his post at the Howard School in 1871 to become the first President of the Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City. Missouri's first African American institution of higher learning had been founded at the urging of black Missourians who served in the Sixty-second United States Colored Infantry. Black soldiers from various units raised funds to launch the new school, which was established in Jefferson City in 1866, with Richard B. Foster serving as the school's principal. In 1870, the Missouri General Assembly agreed to provide state support for the fledgling institution, and shortly thereafter Smith was named to the newly created post of president.30 Following Smith's departure from Warrensburg, his wife Sophia, with the continuing support of the AMA, took over as the teacher at the Howard School. Her letters to the AMA indicate that classes for black students were being taught in both the Howard School and the Snoddy building.3 ' Preparatory to its dissolution, the Freedman's Bureau transferred ownership of the Howard School building to the American Missionary Association in 1869, with the stipulation that the building or any subsequent proceeds from its rent or sale should perpetually be devoted to educational purposes and the added proviso that pupils should never be excluded on account of race or previous condition of servitude. Eventually the AMA withdrew its financial support for black education in Warrensburg, and in 1879, the philanthropic association conveyed ownership of the Howard School property to the Warrensburg School District for the sum of $150." Following that transfer, the Warrensburg School Board assumed sole responsibility for the school's operation, but not surprisingly the Board lagged in its support for black education. A few vocal citizens challenged the board to address the educational needs of Warrensburg's African American students. In a letter published in the March 11, 1886 issue of the Standard Herald, C. H. Stewart observed that: The Howard School of this city, as it stands today, is too small to accommodate the great number of children that live in this district. We need four teachers here to do justice to the colored youths in this community. We need higher branches than we are carrying. We need a school so graded that the scholars that are competent may take up high studies that will elevate their minds, something that will create and at the same time stimulate an appetite for study. That will make them factors indeed in the great reforms that the American people are looking forward to accomplish. 27 Warrensburg Standard, July 26, 1867. 28 Minutes of the Warrensburg Board of Education, April 2, 1867, November 29, 1869, and September 6, 1873, and History of Johnson County, Missouri (ISSl), 432. 29 History of Johnson County, Missouri (1881), 283. 30 Lorenzo J. Greene, Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio F. Holland, Missouri's Black Heritage. Revised edition. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 98-101. 31 Sophia L. Smith to Otis O. Howard, November 12, 1873, AMA Archives. 32 William E. Crissey, Warrensburg, MO: A History With Folk Lore (Warrensburg, Mo: Star-Journal Publishing Company, 1924), np.
The care that is exercised in the interest of the white pupils by the board of directors in preparing them school room is retired to the backgrounds, when the subject of the colored man is brought forward.31 Stewart went on to lament that without such additional instruction, Warrensburg's black students could not be adequately prepared to attend the Lincoln Institute. Stewart then invited all black taxpayers to attend a meeting on March 16 at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church for the purpose of advancing the educational interests of their children. 32 Such efforts yielded results when those in attendance at the April 3, 1888 annual school meeting voted to authorize the issuance of bonds in the amount of $4000 for the purpose of "erecting a new building for the colored schools" and for the addition of two new rooms to the Reese building, a school for white children. On May 21, 1888 the Board of Education approved plans for the construction of a black school building consisting of three rooms 24'x32' with two halls. Each of the Howard School's three new rooms was equal in size to the entire original building. The board contracted with John Newcomer of Kansas City to provide the necessary plans and specifications. The board approved the plans submitted by Newcomer after making some unspecified alterations, additions, and modifications. Newcomer, identified as an architect in the board's minutes, received a fee of $45.50 for his services. Once the final plans had been approved, the board invited local builders to submit bids for the new school's construction. The board awarded a contract to the low bidder, William Lowe. His successful bid of $1605 included $1570 for the building and $35 for grading. The agreement also stipulated that he could have the old building, which was to be torn down to make way for the new school. The board further directed that the Howard School lot should be surveyed and the corners established and marked before the new building was laid off. They ordered "Star school desks No. 2, with ink wells etc. all complete ready to put down," from Haynes, Spencer, & Co. of Richmond, Indiana, at a cost of $2.95 each. The board also sought advice concerning the construction of a coalhouse and two privies and for laying out walks at Howard School. Following its completion in 1888, the new Howard School became the sole educational facility for African Americans in Warrensburg. The year that the new school opened, the board employed Miss E. Molten, Frank Davis, and Professor W. B. Highgate to teach at the Howard School. Molten and Davis were each paid $35 per month, Highgate received an additional $10 per month for serving as the school's janitor.33 As more students successfully completed instruction in lower grades, demands for more advanced coursework increased. Two years of high school courses were added initially. In 1929 the eleventh grade was added, and still later, the twelfth grade. With this final step, the Howard School program met the state's four-year standard for high school programs. In May 1932, Lillian Inez Visor became the first student to receive a diploma for the four-year high school program. Although the four-year high school curriculum satisfied the minimum state standards, the board continued to employ only three teachers for the Howard School. They were expected to provide instruction for all twelve grades. When the State Department of Education adopted new requirements for the accreditation and classification of schools in 1948, the school could not meet the higher new standards. After twice failing to secure approval for a bond issue that included the additional funds that would have been required to upgrade the Howard School, the Warrensburg School Board voted to discontinue the Howard School's high school program. They agreed to transport any qualified African American high school students to the C. C. Hubbard High School (NR 7/03/97) located thirty miles to the east in Sedalia. 34 Following the closing of the high school program, the school board authorized improvements designed to modernize the Howard School facility, which was then used solely as a grade school. Those improvements included the addition of two indoor toilet rooms, an enlargement of the south classroom, and the installation of a heating plant. The south room was designated to serve as an assembly room or an auxiliary classroom. The Howard School offered classes for African American students until the integration of Warrensburg's schools led to its closing in 1955. Closure of the Howard School was, perhaps, a mark of its success, rather than failure. Over time 31 Warrensburg Standard, March 11, 1886. 32 Warrensburg Standard, March 11, 1886. 33 Minutes of the Warrensburg Board of Education, February 24, March 7, May 21, June 11, June 18, July 3, July 13, and August 28, 1888. 34 Lucille Gress, "The Howard School: A Warrensburg Landmark," typescript, np, copy on file at the Heritage Library, Johnson County Historical Society, Warrensburg, Missouri.
Warrensburg residents came to the realization that the educational needs of black children were not being adequately met in the segregated school. Growing numbers understood that all children deserved the right to be educated in settings free of any color bias against the learner. Howard School played a role in developing these attitudinal changes, which eventually led to demands for the integration of Warrensburg's schools. Many former students still vividly remember their childhood experiences at Howard School. Frances Morgan Harden, who entered the eighth grade at Howard School, when her parents moved to Warrensburg in 1939 spoke eloquently about her memories of the Howard School: Felice Gaines was one of my teachers, and the Greers, Fred and Olive. Felice was very exacting. She taught sewing and candy making. She had two sewing machines for two to fourteen girls. The manual training classes were on one side: it was noisy and dusty there. We'd have sawdust in the room, when Mrs. Greer was teaching us to cook. I was quite happy about the integration of schools because we had to use outdated books from other schools. I think the teachers did the best they could, they just didn't have much to work with. We moved into the change process of desegregation without any fighting. It went smoothly." After completing her studies, Harden became the first Warrensburg's first African American practical nurse in the employ of a local physician. Leona Gray Williams Mackey, who began her studies at Howard School in 1920, recalled walking the 4'/2 miles from her home south of Warrensburg to the school because as she said, "We didn't know anything about busses in those days." Mackey completed two grades during her first year at Howard and advanced to through the tenth grade in 1929. At that time, Howard only offered instruction for grades one to ten. She subsequently moved to Coffeyville, Kansas, where she lived with an uncle in order to complete her high school education. She later attended the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and Lincoln University in Jefferson City. Mackey taught school in several Missouri school districts. The annals of Howard School are replete with similar stories of students who benefited from their days there.36 Following Howard School's closing the old building continued to serve the Warrensburg community in various ways. When a fire destroyed the Warrensburg Armory Building in 1955, the Johnson County Library, which had been housed there, temporarily occupied quarters in the Howard School building. In the late 1950s, the Howard School was again pressed into service as the meeting place for Warrensburg's kindergarten classes. In 1968 the Warrensburg School District sold the building to the Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church of Warrensburg, which used the building for its religious services until it constructed a new church building behind the Howard School in 1987. 37 With the completion of the new building, the congregation vacated the Howard School building, which now stands empty. Today the Howard School is one of the oldest remaining African American School buildings in Missouri. The only known earlier such structure is the Benjamin Banneker School in Parkville, Missouri (NR 9/22/95), which predates the Howard School by three years. The Howard School's continuing presence in Warrensburg symbolizes the African American struggle to obtain educational parity in Missouri. Its well documented history is, in large measure, a microcosm of the educational experiences of black Missourians from the time of emancipation to integration. For these reasons it qualifies for listing at a level of state significance. 3
Bibliography American Missionary Association Archives, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Barnard, Henry. School Architecture. 1970 Reprint. Edited by J. McClintock and R. McClintock. New York: Teachers College Press 1970. Challman, S.A. The Rural School Plant for Rural Teachers and School Boards, Normal Schools, Teachers' Training Classes, Rural Extension Bureaus. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1917. Cockrell, Ewing. History of Johnson County, Missouri. Topeka, Kansas: Historical Publishing Co., 1918. Crissey, William E. Warrensburg Mo.: A History with Folk Lore. Warrensburg, Mo: Star-Journal Publishing Company, 1924. Earl, Edward C. The Schoolhouse. Washington D.C.: 1917. Greene, Lorenzo, Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio F. Holland. Missouri's Black Heritage. Revised edition. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993. Gress, Lucille D. An Informal History of Black Families of the Warrensburg, Missouri Area. Warrensburg, Mo.: The Mid-America Press, 1997. . "The Howard School: A Warrensburg Landmark," typescript, copy on file at Heritage Library, Johnson County Historical Society, Warrensburg, Mo. Guilford, Andrew. America's Country Schools. Washington D. C.: The Preservation Press, 1984. The History of Johnson County, Missouri. Kansas City, Mo: Kansas City Historical Company, 1881. Howard School File, Heritage Library, Johnson County Historical Society, Warrensburg, Mo. Kremer, Gary R. James Milton Turner and the Promise of American Life. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991. Minutes of the Warrensburg Board of Education, Warrensburg R-6 School District Central Office, Warrensburg, Mo Missouri Historic Inventory Survey Form No. 67, "Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church, Johnson County East Survey, 1987. Missouri Historic Inventory Survey Form No. II-11, "Jesus Saves Pentecostal Church Annex, June 2000 update. Richardson, Joe M. "The American Missionary Association and Black Education in Civil War Missouri." Missouri Historical Review, 69 (July 1975), 433-48. Roller, David C. and Robert W. Twyman, the Encyclopedia of Southern History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979. Warrensburg Standard, Warrensburg, Missouri.
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