Two Twelve and a Half refers to the Delaware
Department of Education school number for the Delmar Colored School, #212 ½. The
White Delmar School was number 163. The Delmar Colored School operated from 1922
to 1965 teaching grades 1 to 8 originally, and in the 1955/56 school year
cutting back to grades 1 to 6. It was located outside of the Delmar Town Limits
on West Jewell Street in the section of Delmar known as Frogtown. A photo of it
in 1941 is shown below.
Environmentally
it must have been difficult for the students and teacher. The land is low in
that area and subject to water standing and attracts snakes, frogs and other
creatures. Behind the School house in the 1920's was a slaughter house. Later
the town dump would be put in brick hole (over by the VFW) which drew rats
galore. It was a commercial area and was but three blocks from the railroad
tracks and train yard. It looks like, in the 1941 picture, the street was still
dirt, but it did have a sidewalk. I was told the reason for sidewalks on West
Jewell was because of the existence of the school.
I will not dwell on
school conditions for colored students prior to the 1920’s, however in 1918
Pierre duPont funded the Service Citizens of Delaware to assimilate immigrants
and naturalized American citizens, including the improvement of schools for
Colored students. The group lobbied for a new school code to establish equal tax
rates and dispersal of revenue.
DuPont established the Delaware Auxiliary
Association to oversee the construction of new schools . Ultimately, 91 duPont
schools were built or improved in Colored settlements between
1922-1925.
The Delaware Auxiliary Association hired architect James Oscar
Betelle, who based his school designs on educational reform ideas of the period.
Betelle’s plans were cottage-like buildings designed with gable roofs, and clad
in shingles or clapboard. Architectural details included porticos with pediments
supported by columns. Large banks of wide sash windows capitalized on light and
ventilation. Interiors ranged from one to three rooms with moveable furniture
for realization of reform teaching and learning practices.
Between 1919
and 1940, Pierre S. DuPont donated more than $6,000,000 to modernize the
Delaware Public Schools. Most of these funds were directed towards Colored
schools with the vast majority of expenditures being devoted to school
construction. One of schools built by DuPont was the Delmar Colored School Two
Twelve and a half.
In 1941 the Delmar Colored school built by Mr. DuPont
was described in an insurance evaluation as being; a one and a half story, no
basement, frame shingle one classroom school building, peaked wood shingle roof,
interior finish wood lath and plaster walls and ceiling, wood floor, trim and
door, heat is furnished by a drum stove. No electric lights and desk and seat
were unattached. It had a total cubic feet of 29,633. In 1941 the depreciated
insured value was $4,700.
The first school teacher was Mrs. Dillard A.
Ethridge. Mrs. Ethridge was born in South Carolina about 1891 and was the widow
of a Baptist Preacher, George H. Ethridge. She had no children. Altho it made
little difference in that time period, the 1920 census indicated Mrs. Ethridge
was a mulatto as opposed to being classified as negro. She was paid $30 a month.
White teachers at the White Delmar School #163 were paid $35 a month. She taught
grades 1 thru 8.
The Colored School Trustees were mostly blue collar
workers. Many worked for the railroad as rail car cleaners, laborers or track
walkers. In the 1921/22 school year, the school was being built so there was no
teacher. The trustees were William G. Price, George H. Williams and William H.
Horsey. In the school year 1922/23 the trustees were William G. Price, George H.
Williams. In the school year 1923/24 the trustees were William G. Price, Isaac
West, and J. W. Crippen.
Needless to say the people in the Delmar Colored
School District were very proud of their school and thanked Mr. DuPont in many
letters to him. As it does today, the pride in the school bought the Colored
Community closer together. An example of these letters follows;
My
Dear Mr. DuPont,
I am appreciating our nice school building you gave us. And
I do not want to do anything to desecrate the soil of America. We are selling
candy to get a dodge ball and a football to play with…. I hope you could come
and see our nice school building. We have a store in our school since we wrote
to you last year and are writing to you again this year.
Pearl Smiley,
Delmar, Delaware, Oct. 27, 1925Pearl was the daughter of George and May
Smiley. She was born about 1917.
We are going to have a test in
History and I am working very hard so that I can get a hundred…. Mr. Dupont we
are having a new Classroom Leader every Monday morning we have elections and
vote and now we are getting up a Jubiline Club for the Fifth, Sixth, and Eight
grade…. We are going to have an entertainment Friday the 24th, we are going to
have a fine time and than after the speaking we are going to have refreshments
to sell. Mr. Dupont we have health rules on the board and we two ladders on the
board the girls has the red one and the boys has the green one the first thing
we have every morning is hear the Victrolia play, the second is to pledge
allegance to the flag, it is up on the wall.
Elizabeth Dembry, 5th grade,
Delmar, Delaware, October 21, 1924.
Mr. DuPont we have nice
library in our school and a model store, so we want you to come and see how good
we have it kept it. We have also had our flag fixed, we hoist it every morning
at sunrise and lower it at sunset. If it rains during our school hours we always
take it down, but we never let it touch the ground, get wet or stay out after
sunset.
Elizabeth Dembry, Delmar, Delaware, Oct. 27, 1925Elizabeth
Demby was the daughter of George E. and May Demby. She was born about
1915.
So school life in Delmar continued it sleepy path until 1954.
In 1952 following a lawsuit by mothers Ethel Belton and Sarah Bulah for
their children to attend white schools in New Castle County Delaware, Judge
Collins Seitz, ruled that black schools were offering far less to children than
the white schools - a violation of the "separate but equal" doctrine enshrined
in the Supreme Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson.
Seitz ordered
desegregation - "the first judge in the nation to order minority children
admitted to public schools" for whites only, according to Schwartz, the federal
judge.
The state appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court, lost, then
battled on to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, the case was joined to other
segregation suits from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina and Washington, D.C.,
and put under one name: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
In 1954,
the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that all
segregation in public schools is “inherently unequal” and that all blacks barred
from attending public schools with white pupils are denied equal protection of
the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The doctrine was extended to
state-supported colleges and universities in 1956. Meanwhile, in 1955
the
court implemented its 1954 opinion by declaring that the federal district
courts would have jurisdiction over lawsuits to enforce the desegregation
decision and asked that desegregation proceed “with all deliberate
speed.”
This in turn caused the Milford School Desegregation Crisis of
1954 when Milford High School attempted to integrate. In Milford there were
cross burnings, school boycotts, and Bryant Bowles, President of the national
association for the advancement of White People. Delaware and Milford gained
national attention.
Even with Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka
ruling, Delaware did not rush to carry out the Court’s will. Only in 1961, after
African American parents sued for enforcement, did the state begin phasing out
its designated-black schools. That process took six years.
And in 1965
the Delmar Colored School #212 ½ and Owen’s Corner Color School #213 were
consolidated into Delmar School #163. It was time for it to happen altho neither
Whites nor Blacks were pleased about it. One Black woman told me "in the Black
school I was someone, when I was moved to the White school I knew I would never
be elected to any class office or honor.”
There was an adjustment period
for both white’s and blacks. When it came time for the Owen Corner (Mt Nebo)
students to be bused to Delmar there was two cross burnings opposite the Owen
Corner school.
The 1964/65 School trustees for the Delmar Colored school
212 ½ were Samuel Bynum, Sr, Andrew Marshall, Sr, Fred W. Nichols, Sr and
William Horsey. The final school teacher was Rothert C. Blunt who taught grades
1 to 6.
Other teachers at the school 212 ½ were Mary A. Douglas (1938
-1959), Viola Maloy (1960), Ruth Lewis ( 1935- 1937 ), and E. Rebekah Ross
(1933-1934).
Other School trustees over the years beside those previously
mentioned were; W.H. Wallace, Isaac West, William Wailes, George H. Williams,
Vernon E. Hearn, Virgil West, Herbert N. Maxfield, Herman Duffy, William H.
Horsey, Robert Sturgis, Levin Horsey, Arthur Williams, Robert Bynum, Edward
Green, Ada Williams, Matthew S. Kenney, Russell Horsey, Mervin Williams, Richard
Hudson, Joseph Duffy, William DeShield, Richardson Hudson, Robert Allen, William
Truitt, Fred Mitchell, and Granville Eugene Hearn,
Photo of area today
where school was is below
