[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 23430]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL REUNION, YORK, SOUTH CAROLINA

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. JOHN M. SPRATT, JR.

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 7, 2004

  Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, on the weekend before Labor Day, some four 
hundred alumni of Jefferson High School gathered for their first 
reunion since Jefferson closed more than thirty years ago.
  Jefferson got its start in a frame school house built for African-
American students next to Wesley United Methodist Church on West 
Jefferson Street in York, South Carolina. From there, Jefferson 
graduated to a Rosenwald school and became the African-American public 
school in a racially segregated system Although the system was called 
``separate but equal,'' Jefferson never had facilities or teaching 
materials equal to its counterparts, the white schools that I attended. 
Used books were passed on from white students, dated and worn. The 
school district built a new high school for white students in 1950, but 
left black students to make the best of their old one. The students, 
teachers, and administrators at Jefferson did just that. They made the 
most of their circumstances. The students who came back for this 
Reunion did not dwell on what they lacked at Jefferson High School. 
They saluted teachers who took a personal interest, believed in them, 
and encouraged them to excel. They recalled their formidable teams in 
football and basketball and the musical talent they produced. They 
recognized the values instilled in them for a lifetime.
  When the alumni sat down for a banquet the last night of their 
reunion, the pride they felt at being ``Jeffersonians'' was easily felt 
and well-founded. Among the four hundred attending the dinner, there 
were graduates who had risen to the highest levels of the Civil Service 
and become department heads in state government; Ph.D.'s in the 
sciences and liberal arts; college professors; school teachers, 
successful entrepreneurs, attorneys; and many more who had 
distinguished themselves. The banquet speaker, Roberta Wright, 
symbolized their success. She finished Jefferson and went on to become 
a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Fisk University and the University of 
Michigan School of Law. She made a stirring speech, challenging 
everyone to do more for the common good.
  With the onset of integration in the early 1970s, Jefferson High 
School came to an end. But the three-day reunion made clear that 
Jefferson lives on in the lives it made better. Hundreds of the alumni 
attending attested to better, more productive lives because of what 
they learned at Jefferson under teachers who cared, encouraged, and 
challenged.

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