Schools

Commemoration Committee Wants Three School Names Changed in Athens

The Milestones in History Commemoration Committee wants to honor the first African American teachers assigned to predominantly white schools in the early 1960s.

They were polite, informed and organized, the two retired educators who spoke before the Clarke County Board of Education Thursday night. They made a case for renaming schools and school buildings in Clarke County for those who helped pave the way for those coming after them.

Committee Chairperson Aurelia Scott briefly told the board about former superintendent Samuel Wasden Wood, who was the principal of Athens High, the supervising principal of Athens Public Schools and then the appointed Superintendent of the system in 1956. He stayed in Clarke County 13 years, Mrs. Scott said, building schools and improving facilities. He also shepherded the school district through desegregation--without a court order.

Wood hired three African American women to teach in the newly consolidated school system. They were Johnnie Lay Burks, Bettye Henderson Holston and Victoria Baker Stroud. The times in which they taught were "perilous, risky, unstable, volatile, explosive," Mrs. Scott said. "They carried the torch and their successes paved the way for others to follow. They knew that the successes of the CCSD faculty integration rested on their shoulders."

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Now, the Milestones in History Commemoration Committee wants the school board to consider re-naming Alps Road Elementary for Betty Henderson Holston; Chase Street Elementary for Johnnie Lay Burks; and to rename Howard Stroud as Howard and Victoria Baker Stroud Elementary. These are the schools where the teachers first taught. The committee also wants the district office building to be named for Samuel Wasden Wood.

The board is considering their request. The committee also advocated that the Baxter Street police substation be named for Rev. Archibald Killian and Donald Wood, the first African American police officers in Athens.

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