THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 23, 1996 TAG: 9602210220
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: L8 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GARY EDWARDS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
Paul Haynes understands the value of education. Zella Barnett wants Paul to understand his history as well.
Paul, 13, is an eighth-grader at Great Neck Middle School. A straight ``A'' student, he is also the president of the Black Male Culture Club at Alanton Elementary, the school where Barnett is an art specialist.
Recently, at one of the club's weekly Thursday afternoon meetings at Alanton, Barnett told Paul and 64 other members of the group about attending segregated schools in Norfolk when she was growing up.
She questioned them, asking them if they realized what that meant and inquiring if their relatives had ever talked to them about the gains that blacks have made.
The theme for the day was ``Remembering Our Bridges.''
``It's important for you to know that people like grandma Helen and grandma Ruth helped to build the bridges to make integration possible,'' said Barnett, referring to the club's two `adopted'' grandmothers who also attended the meeting.
The women, Helen Moore and Ruth Ward, were at the club meeting to read from the book ``The Story of Ruby Bridges'' by Robert Coles, Harvard Medical School professor/psychiatrist.
The book is a factual account of a young girl who was the first black student to attend a previously all-white school in New Orleans.
Moore taught Barnett when the latter was a first-grader at Liberty Park Elementary School in Norfolk.
Now 78, Moore is retired from the Virginia Beach Public School System. Ward, 80, is retired from Norfolk Public Schools.
``Do you know what it's like; can you imagine going to a school where there were no white students?'' asked Barnett, who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School before it was integrated.
Rosa Edwards, a teacher at Alanton and adviser to the club, knows. She attended the segregated Crispus Attucks School in Hollywood, Fla., from first grade through high school.
The Black Male Culture Club at Alanton was founded six years ago by Edwards, and members are welcomed back even after they have left the school.
In addition to having their adopted grandmothers come in to read and talk to them sometimes, club members call and check up on the two women regularly to make sure they're all right.
``I know that our club was the first at an elementary school,'' said Janet Zanetti, one of two guidance counselors at the school.
``I think it is probably the largest and most active, too. We meet every week and some of the middle and high school students walk to get to the meeting.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Helen Moore, left, listens as Ruth Ward reads a story on school
integration to the Black Male Culture Club at Alanton Elementary.
Club member Derrick DeJesus wears the club T-shirt for the weekly
Thursday meeting.
KEYWORDS: BLACK HISTORY MONTH by CNB