Spears Avenue School ‘heaven’ for blacks

Snuggled against one side of Stringer’s Ridge, Spears Avenue School gave meaning to the term “neighborhood school” for several generations of black students.

“It was heaven to us,” said Nannie Berry Woods, who graduated from the school’s last class in 1966. “It was a very good school.”

The North Chattanooga area, often called Hill City then, was like a city within itself, she said.

“The majority of people who lived in our neighborhood had a child who went to that school,” Mrs. Woods said. “We rarely ventured out from over there.”

The school, she said, was red brick and stone, with six classrooms, an auditorium, cafeteria and offices on the upper floor and a recreation area and restrooms in the basement.

When Spears Avenue closed at the beginning of desegregation, its basement continued to be used for at least a decade as a recreation center and service center. The building was razed in the 1980s. Its remaining foundation is now grown over with weeds and vines.

With playground equipment in front of it, a field for baseball or softball on a hill above it and the basement for after-school activities, Spears Avenue was a place where she spent a lot of time, said Mrs. Woods.

“I went there every day,” she said. “They wouldn’t let us go to G. Russell Brown (a white elementary school on nearby Manning Street with better and fenced playground facilities). It was the only recreation we had.”

Clara D. Smith, of Chattanooga, a student at the school in the 1960s, remembered parties and basketball in the recreation center.

“There was a whole lot of stuff going on,” she said.

“Mrs. Georgia Hairston ran the center back then,” according to an anonymous online blog, “and she fit the mold of her citywide counterparts, with dedication and commitment toward the youth of her community.”

Mrs. Woods said Spears Avenue students, unusual for the time, changed classes for various subjects instead of being taught by one teacher per grade. Her classes, she said, were small, with about 15 students each.

Her favorite teacher, she said, was Vera Mathis Jones, who taught English and reading and also helped with music instruction.

“She taught us about our culture,” said Mrs. Woods. “She was inspirational. The teachers really taught us how to be ourselves.”

Clara Smith, 56, said she didn’t have a favorite teacher.

“All of them were nice,” she said.

Freda Moore Smith of Chattanooga, who attended the school for three years in the 1960s, said she became an educator because of Mrs. Jones, who taught her in fourth and fifth grade.

“She was a mother figure,” she said. “She was very nurturing. We knew when we walked through the door we were going to learn. She showed how fun and interesting it could be.”

Mrs. Smith, 54, went on to teach for 31 years in the Chattanooga City and Hamilton County systems and is now teaching in the Dalton City Schools.

“It was like a family,” she said of Spears Avenue School. “It seems like (everyone there was) related to each other. No one was a stranger.”

“It was foundational,” said Hazel Banks McDermott, 55, who attended the school in the 1960s. “It was like home. Everybody took care of each other, and everybody’s parents took care of everybody.”

During her six years at Spears Avenue, Ms. Woods said, the school had two principals, one “strict” and “by the book” (John Julian) and one “a little bit lenient” (Janie Bell Holder).

C.B. Robinson, an educator who was much later a Tennessee state representative and the man for whom the Dupont Parkway bridge over the Tennessee River is named, was once principal there, according to an oral history housed in the library of Tennessee State University.

DO YOU REMEMBER?

In future weeks, long-closed Chattanooga elementary schools that area baby boomers attended such as Central, Chattanooga Avenue, Fort Cheatham and West Main Street, H. Clay Evans, Third District, South St. Elmo and Alton Park will be featured. Any former students or teachers with recollections of the schools can e-mail Clint Cooper at ccooper@timesfreepress.com or call 757-6497.