Milam County Historical Commission
Milam County, Texas
All credit for these articles go to
Susie Sansom-Piper and
the Rockdale Reporter
Milam County, Texas
All credit for these articles go to
Susie Sansom-Piper and
the Rockdale Reporter
index to Black History month articles
Written by Susie Sansom-Piper and
published in the Rockdale Reporter
Written by Susie Sansom-Piper and
published in the Rockdale Reporter
50 Years Hence - Part 1
School of Champions, School of Integrity
By Susie Sansom-Piper
*****
Editor’s note: This year’s Black History Month series, the 40th by former Rockdale educator Susie Sansom Piper, is a bit different from the others.
Over the next three weeks, she will present 50 Years Hence, personal sketches and musings. This week Mrs. Piper sets the state by remembering the final days of the Aycock school in the 1960s. She was its final principal.
*****
Reporter contributor More than 50 years ago — May, 1966 — the Aycock High School graduating class stepped into the world to take their places in it.
This marked the final graduating class of a grandiose school, a school of champions, a school of integrity.
The majority of black schools in the south faced the same problem, but also inserted acts of violence in similar situations.
The local school board decided to integrate the sixth grade into the middle school and place Aycock High into Rockdale High.
It also transferred one of the black instructors into the junior-high school and two into the high school.
These instructors would teach remedial science and mathematics and handle vocal music.
Black teachers were retained, provided they were property owners, while the remaining faculty members who were boarders had to seek employment elsewhere.
Some did exceptionally well, even reaching into foreign countries with their educational skills.
Four teachers remained to complete the finality of closing a school that still had the newness (10 years old), the character, the community outreach.
And so, on one May afternoon, students, four teachers and a few visitors gathered under the huge old oak trees on the north side of Aycock School to pay homage and bid farewell to a great school.
School of Champions, School of Integrity
By Susie Sansom-Piper
*****
Editor’s note: This year’s Black History Month series, the 40th by former Rockdale educator Susie Sansom Piper, is a bit different from the others.
Over the next three weeks, she will present 50 Years Hence, personal sketches and musings. This week Mrs. Piper sets the state by remembering the final days of the Aycock school in the 1960s. She was its final principal.
*****
Reporter contributor More than 50 years ago — May, 1966 — the Aycock High School graduating class stepped into the world to take their places in it.
This marked the final graduating class of a grandiose school, a school of champions, a school of integrity.
The majority of black schools in the south faced the same problem, but also inserted acts of violence in similar situations.
The local school board decided to integrate the sixth grade into the middle school and place Aycock High into Rockdale High.
It also transferred one of the black instructors into the junior-high school and two into the high school.
These instructors would teach remedial science and mathematics and handle vocal music.
Black teachers were retained, provided they were property owners, while the remaining faculty members who were boarders had to seek employment elsewhere.
Some did exceptionally well, even reaching into foreign countries with their educational skills.
Four teachers remained to complete the finality of closing a school that still had the newness (10 years old), the character, the community outreach.
And so, on one May afternoon, students, four teachers and a few visitors gathered under the huge old oak trees on the north side of Aycock School to pay homage and bid farewell to a great school.
Photo by Mike Brown - Rockdale Reporter
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.
Aycock High School was only about 10 years when it closed due to desegregation in the middle 1960s.