Carolyn Gray recalls how she and her friends watched the construction of the Providence Primary school in Temple one summer, amazed that it was being built for them. Gray was in the sixth grade when the school opened in 1958.

“It had indoor plumbing, which we didn’t even have at home,” Gray said with a laugh. “We had a nice cafeteria. It had a stage. You know, it was kind of a combination cafeteria-theater. ... It had a nice velvet curtain with our school initial on the front. The curtain was royal blue and the big P was in white.”

Providence was one of five schools built in Carroll County for black students between 1954 and 1958. The others were Glanton-Hindsman Primary in Villa Rica, Springview Primary (now Central Elementary), Hudson Primary in Bowdon and Carver High School in Carrollton. Schools here would become integrated in 1965.

The last segregated Carroll County school closed in 1968, Gray said.

When the schools were integrated, what used to be the black schools were reopened under new names.

“We became orphans with no history,” Gray said. “Our history just mysteriously ended in 1968. ... The younger generations, subsequent generations have no idea that these schools were once black schools.”

Gray, chief executive officer of the Carver High Museum and Archives of West Georgia, felt it was important to reconnect with that history. That is why she and other former students of the county’s black schools came together to create the Carver High Museum and Archives. And that is why she asked the school board to dedicate plaques in each of those schools that were once black schools.

Gray's sister, Janice Smith, believes the history needs to be taught.

“I think that maybe young people across the board should be made aware of what price was paid and what sacrifices people made so that they don’t take this for granted today,” Smith said.

Each of the schools will have a dedication of its plaque in February. Central Elementary will have the dedication Feb. 15. The Temple Elementary dedication will be Feb. 21 and Glanton-Hindsman will be on Feb. 22. Bowdon Elementary will hold its dedication on Feb. 29. All of the dedications are scheduled for 9:30 a.m.

There will also be a celebration on Feb. 17 at Moore’s Chapel United Methodist Church in Carrollton from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

In May 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregation laws and its “separate but equal” public schools for black and white students but it took a while for desegregation to reach Carroll County.

“You have to put your head in the perspective of the times,” said Gray. “Blacks and whites did not mix. It was hazardous to your health to even think about mixing with white people in those days.”

Most whites resisted desegregation and had the support of the authorities, Gray said.

In 1956, Georgia Sen. Richard Russell wrote and released the final draft of the Southern Manifesto decrying the Supreme Court decision. Only three Southern senators -- Albert Gore Sr., Lyndon Johnson and Estes Kefauver refused to sign the manifesto.

It wasn’t until 1957 that a statute made its way into Georgia’s law books that denied public money to non-segregated schools. Even after that, it took several years to get the process of integrating the schools started. In 1959, Judge Frank A. Hooper ordered the desegregation of Atlanta’s public schools. In 1960, Hooper set a May 1, 1961, deadline for the desegregation.

“The way the Supreme Court decision was written gave the states wiggle room,” Gray said. “It found that segregation of public accommodations was illegal, was unconstitutional, but it stated that it should be remedied with all due speed. It didn’t set a date certain.”

That let the states take as long as they wanted to change or not change if they chose, she said.

In Carroll County, the Supreme Court decision was an impetus for the construction of new schools for black students.

Before that the students attended school in recycled military barracks or whatever they could find, she said.

“It was heated by a big pot-belly stove,” Gray said of her barracks-school. “All of the classes were doubled up. First, second and third, I think were together and fourth and fifth was together and sixth and seventh was together.”

Providence was larger and the classes were separated, she said. Gray remembers worrying at first because the younger children were so far away.

Her father, Leonard, one of the trustees of the new school, was pleased with the new school, she said. Although the black community knew about Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement, to them it was far away from Carroll County, a philosophical ideal, not an attainable goal, she said.

“We had learned through our lives and our parents’ lives and their parents’ lives to be happy with what you got,” Gray said. “We had no power and no means to change anything.”

The integration process started in fall 1965, but was voluntary. Gray graduated from Carver High, which is now the Burwell Center in Carrollton, in May. But her sister, Janice (Smith) and brother, Phillip, were two of about 10 students who transferred from Carver High School to the all-white Temple High School that first year.

“I understand it was a terrible experience,” Gray said. “It wasn’t as violent as I had seen in some places, but my sister told me that they were constantly chided. That first day of school there were parents out there screaming at them and calling them names “ the n-word among other things.”

Smith spent her high school career at Temple. The first year was hard and never got better, just different, she said. As the years went by, the black students were tolerated, but they were not accepted, she said.

“We were shaking things up and people were fighting against the change,” she said.

Glenda Washington, the first black student to graduate from Temple High School, transferred that same year. She hadn’t wanted to change schools, she said. She was an honors student about to start her senior year and was not happy about the change.

“My mama made me,” Washington said. “That was her decision and not mine.”

She said the change was not as difficult for her as some of the other students, despite the verbal abuse she took. She just dealt with it.

“That wasn’t something new,” Washington said. “I mean, from time to time you had that anyway, you see what I’m saying. That wasn’t something that just happened that day.”

Washington graduated with honors in 1966. She went to work at Sewell Plant 3 for almost 30 years. Now she owns Praises Restaurant in Carrollton.

She said integration was a matter of changing the mindset of the people.

“It was just, really just getting used to seeing black and white together at school,” Washington said.

Dorothy Burton-Callaway, a member of the Carroll County Board of Education, attended the black schools and was a member of the first class graduating from Carver High School in 1955.

She went to college and began teaching in Georgia’s black schools in 1959.

“At the time I started teaching it was considered that blacks were not considered capable of teaching white students,” Burton-Callaway said. She remembered the white superintendent at her first job lecturing the black teachers on how to do their jobs. They all had their college degrees, bachelor’s, master’s, some were working toward their doctorate, she said.

“He had a fourth grade education,” Burton-Callaway said. “Those were the times. It was a learning experience and I have no bitterness in my heart.”

Washington agreed, noting that the period was a time of adjustment for everyone.

“I’m still friends with the girls I went to school with,” she said. “We still see each other now and I mean we’re always glad to see each other.”

Donald Nixon, chairman of the Carroll County Board of Education, had a different experience as white student.

He graduated in 1964 from a segregated high school. He attended West Georgia College the following fall and in his biology class he noticed his neighbor, a black woman, in the classroom.

“As I sat there, it went through my mind that the girl had to either drive or go be bused at Carver High School,” Nixon said. “The students that had been in the segregated school were then working right with us, listening to the same professor ... instead of getting on the school bus and going to Mt. Zion.”

He looks back and wonders why it took so long, Nixon said.

As difficult as the experience was, being part of ending segregation was worth the pain, Smith said. The black students had made the commitment to each other to see the experience through and to remain non-violent because they wanted what was promised to every citizen of this country.

“Everyone deserves a chance at equal rights,” she said. “In the grand scheme of things, the people that went through this and did everything, to me they are like veterans that served in a different kind of war -- a war to make our Constitution and our Bill of Rights righteous. ... We were in the fields of battle to say that the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights they do mean something. It’s just not words on a piece of paper.”