Date: June 20, 2007
By: BY CHASTITY PRATT, FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Source:
The Detroit Free Press Graduates of Detroit's old Miller High slowly walked the building's halls Monday, calling out the names and accomplishments of classmates staring out from faded black-and-white photos.
Just about anybody who became a somebody after living in or near the African-American community known as Black Bottom is on the school's walls.
Former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, a student but not a graduate, smiled down from a signed photo. Olympic gold medalist Lorenzo Wright cleared a hurdle in another picture along the school's Wall of Fame.
Despite its rich history and its designation as a registered Michigan historic site, Miller is closing for good Thursday. It's one of 33 Detroit schools scheduled to be boarded up by fall in a nationally unprecedented school closure plan. A ceremony is scheduled for 5-8 p.m. tonight there.
Miller High was the first African-American high school created by forced segregation in Detroit and was, as one author put it, an academic and athletic powerhouse that outperformed many white schools during its existence from 1933 to 1957.
But that was then.
Now it's an academically struggling middle school in disrepair, save the green and gold historic marker erected in 2005. Teachers are packing up, but no one is sure what will happen to the photos -- or the legacy.
"I'm mad about it. I'm very disappointed," said Charlie Primus, former Harlem Globetrotter, educator and president of Miller High Alumni Inc. He is still hoping something is in the works to save the school.
Students and supporters of some of the other closing schools -- such as Northern and Murray-Wright high schools -- protested and staged walkouts this spring to try to save their schools. Not so with Miller.
School Board President Jimmy Womack, who graduated from Miller in 1967 after it became a middle school, said that almost every dignitary in the city called to ask to keep it open, but there was no public outcry and no financial savior has surfaced.
"Maybe we should've fought a little bit harder to keep this school open," said Richard Kelly, 72, class of 1952. "I think with all this expertise we have here, it should've never closed."
Pride and acceptance
The 88-year-old building on the city's east side was all but ignored during the state takeover of Detroit Public Schools, even as then-Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Burnley's administration spent much of a $1.5-billion capital improvement bond.
"We know how we got here, but how do we get out of here?" Womack said of the pending closure.
If ever there was a time that Detroit needed to remember and embrace Miller's legacy, it's now, said Kelly, who helped arrange the Wall of Fame at Miller. He said Detroit students need the kind of love Miller High's mostly white staff invested.
Primus agreed.
"When blacks could go to the other schools, they were just tolerated because their parents had moved out of Black Bottom," he said. "Miller accepted us."
Cynthia Davis, president of the parent group for four years, said the school has retained its family feel. She and her three children attended the school. "I'm going to miss the teachers and dedication of the administrators."
Jazz Banks, 14, an eighth-grader who graduated this week, can recite info on some of the people on the Wall of Fame. She said the school is a family.
"These teachers have been like parents to everybody," she said. "It's sad. ... I wanted my kids to go to the school I went to."
Succeeding against the odds
Miller gave the city more African-American professionals than any other during its time, according to "The Historify of Sydney D. Miller High..." a doctoral dissertation Miller graduate Cloyzelle Jones submitted to Wayne State University in 1971.
But it only became a high school by force. During the Depression, parents protested the rising population of black students attending Eastern High. The school board bowed to the pressure and decided in 1933 that Miller Intermediate School would become a small high school. Most students came from or near the Black Bottom area.
A transfer policy allowed whites in the area to go to Eastern, according to "The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-1981." "It was one of the clearest examples of racial segregation," said University of Michigan professor Jeffrey Mirel, the book's author.
Miller was never expected to succeed, alumni say. It never had the classrooms, athletic fields or resources to be a high school, Mirel and Jones said.
But black leaders and the community rallied around the school, and it became one of the city's preeminent high schools. The Trojans won several city basketball titles, though the school had no full-size basketball court and had to play games at the recreation center in the Brewster projects.
Those were the days when teachers instructed teens on how to dress, speak and raise a family, Thomas Sledge, class of 1948, remembered Monday.
Those were the days when boys and girls -- separately -- swam naked and unashamed in swim class. And when the school was surrounded by black-owned businesses ranging from dry cleaners to confectioners. Lunch cost 23 cents.
"If you went to school in the South, that's what Miller was like," said Samuel Pickens, 72, class of 1953. "You got a teacher and she taught you everything -- how to dress, hygiene, manners -- in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic."
'There's some value in history'
Principal Sharon Dennis said news of the Miller closure has drawn out local historians and alumni scrambling to put together footage and photos. A program about the school recently ran on Comcast cable.
Last Wednesday, Dennis opened the nonfunctioning pool to show it to two alumni who are recording the school's history.
She still can't believe Miller will be boarded up, she said walking through the musty locker room.
"We've got to realize there's some value in history," she said.
The annual Miller High picnic during the second Sunday in August will likely continue, Primus said. It draws about 5,000 people a year, some of whom park their mobile homes in the field across from the school.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the last Miller High School graduation.
"It's a powerful legacy. It's an important legacy -- one that shouldn't be forgotten," Mirel said. "It's a model for the kinds of things we want in Detroit. If we can find the magic that Miller had, we'd get the Nobel Prize."
Contact CHASTITY PRATT at 313-223-4537 or cpratt@freepress.com.
Labels: Educational Preparedness
