MALVERN — It happens just once every three years, but the Malvern-Wilson School Reunion and Homecoming brings together students who attended either Malvern Colored High School or A.A. Wilson High School. Many still live in Malvern, but others are scattered across the United States.
They all come for the same reasons — to celebrate their African-American heritage and to visit with old friends and family.
This year’s reunion will begin Thursday and conclude Aug. 9 at various locations in Malvern and Hot Springs.
Edward Green of Malvern serves as chairman of the reunion planning committee. Green, 73, graduated from Malvern Colored High School in 1959.
Other members of the planning committee include the Rev. Henry “Hank” Mitchell, 62; Lillian Bond, 83; and Jim Hunter, 67, and his wife, Laura Hunter, 68, who all live in Malvern.
The Malvern Colored School was built in 1929 as the Malvern Rosenwald School. (Rosenwald schools were built in rural areas of the United States primarily for African-American students through the Julius Rosenwald Fund, established by Rosenwald, who was president of Sears, Roebuck and Co. in the early 1900s.)
It served students through the ninth grade; black students in the Malvern School District had to go elsewhere for their high school education at that time.
High school classes were added to the Malvern Colored School beginning in 1942, and by 1945, it had its first graduating class. Malvern Colored High School continued operating until 1952, when the new Annie Agnes (A.A.) Wilson High School (named for a beloved African-American teacher) was opened for the African-America students in the district. The last high school class graduated from Wilson in 1968, when, Green said, “total” integration took place in the Malvern school districts.
“Malvern High School was a white-only institution until 1968, when the Malvern schools were integrated,” Green said. When Wilson High School opened in 1952, the Malvern Colored School became an elementary school and was later named Tuggle Elementary School after Sophronia Tuggle, another beloved African-American teacher in the Malvern School District.
Activities for the 13th triennial reunion of all classes of the Malvern Colored and Wilson high schools include the following:
• A gospel fest at Bethel AME Church, 1220 Carmichael St., is set to start at 6 p.m. Thursday.
• Registration for the reunion is set to begin at 5:30 p.m. Friday at Malvern High School, 505 E. Highland Ave., followed by a welcome program at 7 in the high school auditorium. Jim Hunter is in charge of the welcome program.
Malvern Mayor Brenda Weldon, a 1973 graduate of Malvern High School, and Perla Mayor Raymond Adams, a 1965 graduate of Wilson High School, will bring greetings to those in attendance.
Scholarship awards will be presented from several organizations, including a Malvern alumni group, two alumni groups from northern California and one alumni group from southern California.
There will be a tribute to the late Lindsey Henry, a well-loved football coach at Wilson High School.
There also will be a memorial to Samuel G. Benson of California, a 1952 graduate of Malvern Colored High School who was a regular reunion attendee and supporter for many years before his death in January. A forensic psychiatrist in the San Francisco area, Benson received his medical degree and doctorate in physiology and pharmacology from the University of Nebraska. He was the guest speaker at the first Malvern-Wilson reunion in 1982.
The welcome program will also include “remembrances” of good times at Wilson High School — a male version and a female version, as well as music that was popular during the years the high school was open — presented by a local band, Estatics, under the direction of Jim Hunter, the lead singer.
The program will end with the singing of the school song, “O Wilson Dear,” written by a Wilson alumna Latora Smith Morgan of Lancaster, California.
Following the welcome program, Lillian Beard will host a block party at her home on Oak Street.
• A brunch and tour of the building that once housed Wilson High School are set for 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Victory Praise and Worship Church and Community Center, 404 N. Banks St.
Mitchell is the pastor at the church. He attended Wilson High School before transferring to and graduating from Malvern High School in 1971. He bought the old Wilson school building and has restored it, and he is also leading an effort to restore the Tuggle building.
• A banquet and dance are set for 7 p.m. Saturday at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs. The keynote speaker will be Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, with entertainment by Martha Burks (a 1971 graduate of Malvern High School) and her band from Dallas, Texas, as well as the local band the Estatics.
• Picnic in the Park, sponsored by the Wilson High School class of 1966, is set for 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Malvern City Park.
Registration for the reunion is $85 per person. For more information or to register, call Jim or Laura Hunter at (501) 332-8945 or email c2462@swbell.net.
The reunion was the “brainchild” of Lillian Beard.
“We started organizing the first reunion in 1981 and held it in 1982,” said Beard, who attended all 12 years of school in Malvern, graduating from the Malvern Colored High School in 1950. She stayed in Malvern, going on to become a nurse and a beautician and to raise a family.
“I was visiting with a cousin. My brother was in the first class to graduate [from Wilson], and her son and my brother were born on the same day,” she said.
“They hadn’t seen each other in 30 years. One lived in New York and the other in California. They had never crossed paths coming home,” Beard said.
“I thought, ‘There’s gotta be a way to get those two here at the same time,’” she said. “I started calling people, and six people met and planned a reunion for the next year.
“It was so joyful … when my brother and cousin met up [at that first reunion]. I couldn’t help but cry.”
They used to call it just a “reunion” but now call it a “reunion and homecoming,” Beard said.
“So many people come back. … It is a homecoming. They come from everywhere,” she said.
“I grew up, partially, here,” Jim Hunter said, adding that he also lived in Michigan and Ohio as a child.
“Most of my elementary years were spent at Tuggle. I left here and came back in mid-eighth grade. I graduated from Wilson in 1966.”
He joined the Air Force, attended college, worked for the telephone company in California for 21 years, took an early retirement and moved back to Malvern when he was 45.
“I had always wanted to come back and be with my family,” he said. He built his “dream home” and decided he needed to go back to work. He applied for a job with the correction department in Benton and spent the next 16 years as a correction officer.
He and his wife, Laura, had gone to school together in Malvern but never really knew each other then. They reconnected and have been married for a few years now.
Laura said she grew up in Malvern and attended Tuggle. She graduated from Wilson in 1964. She attended Philander Smith College in Little Rock and came back to Malvern to teach band and choir, first at Wilson High School, then at Malvern High School.
“I tell everybody this,” Jim said. “I went to school in Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, California and Arkansas — college and high school. Some of the very best teachers I had in my life were here in Malvern, teachers like Henrietta Bailey, the
principal’s wife. She taught history. She gave us the things we needed to succeed in life.”
Green agreed: “She taught us on a collegiate level.”
Green, a graduate of Philander Smith College, came back to Malvern and taught at Wilson High School. He taught science and biology there for 21/2 years.
Mitchell said that although integration appeared to go smoothly in Malvern, there were some underlying problems, but “nothing flagrant,” he said. “The biggest problem was they didn’t know us, and we didn’t know them.”
Mitchell bought the old Wilson building in 2012.
“It was offered to me free,” he said with a smile. However, he ended up buying it — he bought it at an auction for $10 — he was the only bidder.
“It had been empty for 10 to 15 years,” he said. “It was falling down.”
He has restored the building, turning several of the old classrooms into a sanctuary. The old gymnasium remains intact, compete with its original ceiling.
“The architecture is so unique,” he said, noting that it is made of 2-by-12-inch boards.
Mitchell is now remodeling one of the rooms in the building, turning it into “the Dragon’s Den.” The “Dragon” was the mascot at Wilson High School.
“It will be a snack room,” Mitchell said. “It will have pictures of the school’s alumni on the walls. There will be free Wi-Fi.”
Mitchell opens up the gym and classrooms in the church to the youth of the community during the summer and spring break. “It’s open to the community,” he said.
Mitchell is now trying to restore Tuggle Elementary School, which sits empty and is in disrepair.
“It is a very hard task,” he said. “Just installing a new roof would be over $60,000. Dr. Benson had pledged to help us. … He gave us $5,000 before his death.”
For more information on the restoration project, call Mitchell at (501) 818-9126.