George Clem High School: A History of Church and Community

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It's a school history that may have gotten lost in the dialogs of African-American schools in Tennessee.

Its football team even won a state black conference championship because, as one alumnus remembers, they caught the much-bigger, favored-to-win school "sleeping."

The alumni and descendants of the George Clem School in Greeneville, Tennessee say, "not so fast -- don't count us out."

The school, located on the west side of Greeneville's downtown, has a long and distinguished history.

And it has a local church to thank for that.

Beginning in 1887, education for African-Americans in Greeneville and Greene County was coordinated by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.

"The AME Church built the first school facility here on this hill," says school and community historian Gene Maddox. "It was called the Greeneville College Academy, which operated it for grades one through 10. There were two wooden structures on this hill in the community.. they were torned down and a cinder-block building was constructed in the early 1920's, and the local board of education leased the land and the building from the church for the education of the area's black students."

(Coincidentally, the name Greeneville College was also the name of another school miles away on Richland Creek south of the town. That school eventually merged with Tusculum College).

Meanwhile, George Clem was an educator who came to Greeneville in 1935 as principal. He oversaw the transition from 10th grade to a full 12-grade curriculum. Clem passed away in 1939, and although his tenure only lasted 4 years, he had a wonderful rapport with his fellow teachers, the students, the community, and more importantly, he was well respected by the educational system in Greeneville.

When the new brick school building was built for African-American students in 1949-50, it was named the George Clem School. Maddox was one of the new building's first students.

"I didn't attend school in the cinder-block building," Maddox says. "My home was nearer to Tusculum, and my family was friends with the instructor at one of the schools there. George Clem was a brand new building, and I had only been used to one-room schools. This new building with the many classrooms, a big gym, one of the most beautiful in the are, and a huge ballfield in front, was fascinating to me and my classmates."

"We were captivated those first few weeks and months by the new-ness of it all."

The George Clem building wasn't too large.. in fact, it was intimate enough that its students felt comfortable.

"We were grades one through 12," remembers Maddox. "All of the elementary grades were in the west end of the building, and the higher grades were on the east end, upstairs. We did not have the course selection that the white schools had, and seldom got new books. All of ours were hand-me-downs from the white schools. After I got older and got into what we consider middle school now, I realized that we didn't have a large African-American population here in Greeneville and Greene County. You could probably set the whole student body on one side of the gym in the bleachers, which were only about six rows. We were not a big school, but our community was proud of us, and we were proud of our school spirit."

Teachers like Mrs. Fannye Jones remember well the students who came through the doors.

She came to the George Clem School from Kentucky in 1953 to teach home economics and language arts, "and anything else I was asked to instruct the kids in." Her husband, John J. (JJ) Jones had come to George Clem a year earlier to coach both the football and basketball teams. No matter how well they did athletically, Mrs. Jones' focus was on the kids' education.

"It was different back then," she says. "Very much different. The kids were family, just like my own kids. The kids nowadays do their own thing, they have their own opinions on doing things. Back then if they misbehaved, you could put 'em in a corner, take 'em out of class and put 'em in a corner until they settled down. You could even use a paddle a little bit every now and then, but now you can't do that. Of course, back then the kids didn't get into too much trouble and you could control them a little bit better. But I loved them, and I loved teaching them. Everybody learned something, and that was the main thing.

"Our teachers took an intense interest, not only in our education, but also our lives," says Gene Maddox. "They were interested in how we carried ourselves, how we conducted ourselves in public. The school itself was a community within the neighborhood, and a very nurturing one. Teachers like Mrs. Jones cared."

FORMER STUDENT OF MRS. JONES, KEVIN SHIPE TALKING OF MRS. JONES, HIS FORMER TEACHER FROM 1978

The George Clem School athletic teams, of which Mrs. Jones' husband John J. (JJ) Jones coached, competed in the Tri-State conference, a collection of upper East Tennessee and SW Virginia black schools. Clem's conference school opponents included Langston in Johnson City, Douglass in Kingsport, Tanner in Newport, Slater in Bristol, TN and nearby Morristown-West. Their non-conference opponents stretched from North Carolina to Virginia and Kentucky.

"We only had basketball and football," says Maddox. "We were a smaller school, and we played one other smaller school, Burnsville in North Carolina. Whenever we'd go on the practice field in front of our school, people would say 'aw, come on Burnsville,' and we'd laugh because they were small like we were. Coach J.J. Jones joined the school as both football and basketball coach in 1953. I only remember us winning the conference once.. it happened in 1959 when we caught Langston 'sleeping.' Oh my gosh, we had swell heads after that!"

"We never really had a losing season, because we also placed smaller schools like us, and we always won those."

As the school prospered, both students and teachers knew, they were studying on borrowed time.

"Our teachers knew integration was coming," Maddox says. "It was a shadow that began to follow us through the halls, into the classrooms and out into the community. We knew the school was closing and our neighborhood would be losing one of its solid rocks in the community. The teachers understood it a lot more than we did, and they started early, trying to prepare the ones moving on, for their new adventure in the white schools. For me, there was a lot of fear. Yes, we had watched integration and its results on TV. Yes, there was a lot of fear, and also anger."

(AT RIGHT) CLINTON (TN) HIGH SCHOOL - OCTOBER 6, 1958

Maddox says, the earlier events at Clinton High School northwest of Knoxville when blacks integrated it, produced and multiplied a lot of that fear, that most people, both black and white, tried to ignore.

"When somebody blew up that school back in the late 50's," he remembers, "we were somewhat removed from that, because it had happened several years earlier. People, both black and white were determined to not let that happen in Greeneville, and they tried to guide us out of our fear."

There was still an understandible nervous anticipation that Maddox says, George Clem's teachers who had seen and heard a lot, became shoulders to lean on in those final Clem days.

"The teachers cared that we would lose our zest for learning because of the new place we were going to and the new environment that we were moving to," Maddox remembers. "As a result, they taught us about personal habits, and what to do if confronted. They taught us not to be afraid to ask questions even though the teachers were white, and even how to follow up if somebody laughed. I didn't realize how important that little thing was, until much later."

The George Clem School closed in 1965, and although the school's impact was felt for many years after that in the community, an association of the alumni did not commence until the early 2000's.

"Our primary focus for coming together as a group, was to gain some community use out of our school building," says Maddox. "When the school closed, ETSU used it as a Greene County campus extention. Later, the Greene County School Board purchased it from the city, to use for their central offices. At that time, the Upper East Tennessee Human Resources Agency had offices in the building, as they also did at the old Douglass School in Kingsport. The office here was an extention of that office. But as you know Calvin, in Kingsport, the Bristol's, Big Stone Gap, and Newport, the old black school buildings became community centers for the neighborhoods. We wanted that here in Greeneville, too, and our group organized with that goal in mind."

Maddox says, the group was discouraged when the city of Greeneville did not allow them to do that at the time, because of the legacy of the building.

"The AME church which operated the first school, had donated the land initially to the city, to build the building that's there now," he says. "It only seemed fair that they would allow us at least some use of the building, but they did not."

Initial anger, eventually became a peaceful co-existance.

"Our group, the George Clem Neighborhood Association did not want the whole building," says Maddox, "because getting the whole building would mean that we would have to maintain it and insure it, but we did want parts of it. As the school board expanded and began to move offices out of the building to some of its facilities downtown, they began to give us space. We now have an office in the building where we have monthly meetings.

"That's a good thing, not just for us, but for the black community here as well."

The future looks bright for the George Clem neighborhood, the alumni community, and the building. The biggest change was changing the focus of the George Clem Neighborhood Association to the George Clem Multi-Cultural Alliance, acknowledging the fact that other ethnicities now live in the community.

"We are working on doing several community activities and events on a regular basis, "says Maddox. "We're partnering with other human services agencies to do things like health screenings for seniors, after-school programs for kids, and activities that folks might have had to travel several miles to receive those services. Elderly people with transportation problems find it difficult to get to needed services, and it's important to provide those in a comfortable environment that is nearby. Regardless of ethnicity, race, age or background, it's important to have services to benefit people, centrally located within the community, and we are now working on that."

The biggest event the Alliance hosts every year, is the "8th of August" celebration, that commemorates the date back in 1863 that military governor and native son Andrew Johnson emancipated the slaves in Tennessee, including his own. The African-American community in Greeneville worked with local legislators and historical groups, to make the date a statewide holiday every year, and its roots trace back to a yearly celebration on the grounds of the former George Clem School.

Recognition is the greater good in getting a positive message across.

That happened two years ago, when the George Clem School historical marker from the Tennessee Historical Commission was dedicated on Summer Street.

"Recognition is one of the steps in getting equality and parity within society," Maddox says. "The historical marker is good for young people in that it lets them know that they have an important history. How much do they know about the school that their parents and grandparents and even their great-grandparents went to? For young people, their only knowledge has been the integrated school. The marker points out that there is a history in your family, a history in your neighborhood, a history within your soul that's important, and that you can be proud of."

"When the state recognizes historical sites, the importance of heritage is emphasized," he says.

"That emphasis is an essential step in making our history whole."

Meanwhile, former teacher Mrs. Fannye Jones has seen a lot of that history during her 95 years. She still lives across the street from the school.

One can tell, that she misses the relationships with the children she taught.

"After George Clem closed down in '65, I went on to teach elsewhere in the Greeneville city school system," she says. "A lot of kids from all over town, I have taught in my career. But it was the relationships that you build with students that I miss the most. When they could come to you with a question about something they'd read in a book, and you answered it for them.. that look of amazement in their eyes when you explained it to them. You knew at that moment that you'd made a connection.. you stimulated the thought process. You just couldn't beat that."

"That kind of relationship is what I miss the most, and it's the kind of relationship that we need to bring back."