ELAINE HARRIS SPEARMAN: Central Carver Museum honors past while building for future
American history cannot be written or told without an accurate remembering and portrayal of the “true South.”
There are far too many unknowledgeable and bitter people attempting to rewrite history. Change what they will, but history cannot be undone. It is tantamount to trying to “unring a bell.”
The song of the South is forever there. The Congressional Record, the Smithsonian Institution, and history books all over the world will be there to accurately trace the American saga, and the role of the South. Forgetting the past only ensures that it will be repeated.
Anywhere you turn, an individual growing up in Alabama during the many years of strife, before any changes, has their own story to tell about the role they played, or the role someone in their family played.
Some of it is exaggerated, or simply made up to become a more relevant figure now or back then. The attempts to rewrite one’s personal history are running rampant. “Truth crushed to the ground will rise again.”
Modern technology, artificial intelligence and screen shooting can cause people to actually have “lying eyes.” Are you seeing what you see? This rhetorical question provides the foundation for the actual preservation of what existed B.T.: Before Technology.
In Alabama, Gadsden is part of the Civil Rights Trail that runs across the South. Anniston is included in that “trail of tears.” Lest we forget, we must be (ever) mindful of Gadsden’s pivotal role in the quest for equal treatment under the law, free access to public places and voting rights, which were among the rights denied.
This was the goal of the Central Carver Foundation Inc., an Alabama nonprofit incorporated in January 2004. The foundation maintains and operates the Central Carver Museum. Katheryn L. Barrett and Bettye J. Knowles were the architects of this major undertaking.
Carver High School sent graduates all over the world, not just the United States. Carver in Gadsden was the first of many schools in the state named in honor of the great scientist George Washington Carver. Built in 1936, Carver High School was Gadsden's first full 12-year public school for African-American students.
The Gadsden Board of Education closed Carver in 1971. It became a casualty of Gadsden’s painful school desegregation, which had begun in 1969.
We are in the time of high school reunions. There still remains a lot of emotions and feelings about African-Americans finding themselves in unwelcoming schools and students in those schools being faced with people who they had no interaction with and only knew stories from family and friends. Many of those stories were inaccurate.
There are still discussions of Black graduates from those “integrated” schools refusing to participate in reunions because the vestiges of ill treatment and lack of understanding that remain to this day as to why some Black students decline to participate.
Though the Carver building was demolished, the grounds remain. Many Carver graduates consider the ground as hallowed. Those teachers who toiled there are forever there in spirit, and in pictures and other memorabilia housed in the Central Carver Museum.
That is the purpose of a historical museum. Modernization and digitalization are occurring in conjunction with the Gadsden Public Library and the Gadsden Art Museum.
In this the 20th year of existence of the Central Carver Museum, the board of directors, which oversees the museum, has revived the Central Carver Advisory Committee.
Under the board’s approval, the Advisory Committee is going forward with the theme, “Central Carver Foundation Inc.: Honoring the Past While Building for the Future.”
The Central Carver Museum will be the highlight of the event. The Advisory Committee believes that it is important that the celebration of 20 years should be held in the footprint of the Carver home.
Claude Burnett, the board chairman, is very clear on the established goals of “preservation of the heritage and legacy of Central Carver, and the creation of a broad community system that magnifies education, community development, and community partnerships.”
We have a lot more to tell the community and Carver High School graduates about the 20th year coming home event.
Elaine Harris Spearman, Esq., a Gadsden native, is an attorney and is the retired legal advisor to the comptroller of the City of St. Louis. The views expressed are her own.
This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: ELAINE HARRIS SPEARMAN: Central Carver Museum to celebrate 20 years
