When I was growing up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, I couldn’t wait to attend Southeast Middle School. In my hometown, it was the only middle school serving the entire area. That meant every student moving from sixth to seventh grade—regardless of which elementary school they attended—would end up there.
Southeast Middle only served one grade: seventh. The year I attended, I had just turned 12, and I was absolutely thrilled. The school was big, it felt important, and I was finally part of something I had long looked forward to. There were no words to describe the excitement I felt.
Like many small towns, the teachers at Southeast were often the same age as our parents—some even knew members of my family. That familiarity added to the comfort and the pride I felt just being there.
But something unexpected unfolded.
My mother had a large collection of photo albums and yearbooks, and I had seen many pictures of her from her high school years. Over time, I began to realize that many of those photos were from a school also called Southeast—Southeast High School. I was too young and naive to make the connection at first. But eventually, conversations with my teachers and my mom helped me put the pieces together:
Southeast Middle School had once been Southeast High School—an all-Black high school.
That truth hit me like a wave.
I was standing in the same halls, walking the same grounds, and sitting in the same classrooms my mother once had. But when she attended, it was because she had to—because she was not allowed to attend school with white students.
As a 12-year-old in the early 1980s, this was hard to process. By then, my school was fully integrated. I knew about segregation, both in the South and across the country. I had heard the stories from my mother, grandparents, and their friends. But it still felt distant—like something in a history book.
That changed the day my mother visited me at school.
She pointed out the familiar features of the building—the infrastructure, the layout, even some of the teachers—and reminded me: “This was my high school.”
That was the moment it all became real.
I was literally attending school in a building that existed because Black students weren’t permitted to learn alongside white students. I wasn’t just learning history—I was living in it.
We often try to present history in a way that’s educational and digestible. But sometimes, that history is uncomfortable. Sometimes, it’s painful. Yet it’s necessary. History doesn’t just inform us about the past—it helps us navigate the future.
My home state didn’t begin fully integrating schools until the early 1970s, nearly 20 years after Brown v. Board of Education mandated desegregation in 1954. Like many towns in the South—and even in parts of the North—Pine Bluff resisted that change.
By the time I entered the school system, it was technically integrated. But remnants of the past remained—quiet, but undeniable. For me, that realization came in the form of a school building: one that symbolized a time when separate was never equal, and access to education was determined by the color of your skin.
That memory has stayed with me.
It’s a reminder that the past is never really gone—it lingers in the places we pass through every day. And if we don’t take the time to acknowledge those ghosts of segregation, we risk forgetting the lessons they’re meant to teach.
Watch the full video on YouTube:
“Growing Up Right After Jim Crow: What Gen X Black Kids Experienced in the South”
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