ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, November 6, 1996 TAG: 9611060042
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
SOME ANGRY RESIDENTS SAY that when Botetourt Intermediate School was renamed, it should have regained the name it had as the last black school in the county.
Verlina Hinton calls it ``a slap in the face.''
It was one thing when the name of her old school - the last black school in Botetourt County - was changed from Central Academy to Botetourt Intermediate 20 years ago. At least that name represented the county.
But now to name it after William Clark, of Lewis and Clark fame, that is too much.
To take a piece of black history and name it after a white man whose only connection to the county is his marriage to a Fincastle girl, Hinton says, is an insult to the black children who attended the school and to the black man who sold his property so it could be built.
Still stinging from the name change that took place months ago, Hinton and others have revived a decades-dead black educational watchdog group called the County-wide League.
They met Saturday at a Blue Ridge church and, after a hymn and a prayer, began to plot their perhaps ironic mission: to preserve a vestige of the last days of separate-but-equal schooling. They want William Clark Middle School to bear its original name again: Central Academy.
They see hope in the names of other former black schools that bear their old names, including Lucy Addison Middle School in Roanoke and Salem's George Washington Carver Elementary, which lost its name for 11 years, but got it back in 1977 after protests by black residents.
William Clark took on its new name at the start of this year because Botetourt opened a second middle school - Read Mountain in Cloverdale. It didn't seem right to have one of the schools bearing the name of the entire county.
The School Board publicized a call for new names a year ago and got hundreds of suggestions on entry forms published in the Fincastle Herald, but Hinton and others say they knew nothing about it.
School Board member Webster Booze, who headed that committee, is ``astounded'' that anyone could have missed it.
On the suggestion of member Barrie Bunn, the School Board has appointed a committee to study ways of making the history of the county's black schools known. Two members of the County-wide League are on the committee.
But rumors are flying that all the committee will do is mount a plaque outside William Clark Middle School. Hinton's response: ``Give the plaque to William Clark.''
Who in the world is William Clark, anyway?
Curtis Brown, president of the County-wide League, said that's the first question people ask him when he shows them a petition supporting the name change.
Any American history book will tell you Clark was one-half, with Meriwether Lewis, of the duo who scouted the Western territories for Thomas Jefferson.
According to Fincastle historian Dottie Kessler, Clark met Fincastle's Judith Hancock just before his expedition and named a river in Montana for her.
On his return in 1808, Clark, 38, married the 17-year-old. Twelve years and five children later, Judith died. Eighteen months after that, Clark married Harriet Kennerly Radford, another Fincastle woman.
That's interesting, the County-wide League says, but it's hardly enough reason to name a school for the man, especially their school.
Before Central Academy was built, the county's black children attended little two-room schools that dotted the countryside.
The original County-wide League kept watch on the schools, making sure they had what they needed. The league also pushed the county to give blacks a better school.
In 1959, with Virginia in the midst of its ``massive resistance'' to the 1954 Supreme Court order to integrate all schools, the all-black Central Academy was dedicated on land bought from Hinton's great-great uncle, Alexander D. Fairfax.
The school provided one roof for all the county's black students, but more importantly, it unified the county's blacks as a family.
At the meeting Saturday, Central Academy alumni reminisced about the annual May Day party at the school, the dances, the green-and-gold choir robes. They recalled how parents made curtains for the cafeteria and planted shrubs on the lawn.
Some have questioned why no blacks spoke up about the name of the school in 1966, when the county's schools were integrated and Central Academy became Botetourt Intermediate.
``When they changed that school to B.I., our parents weren't worried about the name, they were afraid for us,'' Hinton said.
When a committee appointed by the School Board put out a call last year for suggestions for new names, one man, James Hickenbotham, wrote suggesting the school be called Central Academy Middle School.
But Booze, the School Board member who led that committee, said the name was eliminated in favor of other names that were suggested by more people. The committee ultimately passed on to the School Board a short list of the most popular names. The board chose William Clark.
The new committee to study ways of telling the story of Central Academy meets for the first time tonight.
``If they offer you all a plaque,'' Brown, the County-wide League president, told the league representatives on the committee, ``don't you all take it.''
LENGTH: Medium: 99 linesby CNB