website 2010

The history of black education in Texarkana, Texas, is important to George "Paddy" Woolridge and his friends.

Woolridge started a Website seven years ago to save the memories of his alma mater, Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, and it's community. The memories span from the early 1900s to 1968, a time of great change for white and black students throughout the country.

“Life for blacks at that particular time is not included in mainstream history,” said Woolridge, who returned to Texarkana last year after many years in Washington, D.C.

He hopes the community will support his Website by making photos, yearbooks and various school memorabilia available for scanning. “We want to make it complete as possible,” he said. Woolridge said the record is a vital part of a community’s identity. “There is importance in maintaining your own history.”

George Haskins, who graduated in 1960, said archiving is particularly important for Texarkana, since some city history could be lost during redevelopment of the areas around Stevens and Griff King public housing. The properties, near Dunbar school, are scheduled for demolition; new housing already stands on the site of the former Bowie Courts.

Haskins, who moved to California after high school and returned here five years ago, is pleased with the progress the city is making but saddened by the loss of history in the Dunbar area. He said he’s discovered details about the neighborhood that are “very enlightening.”

“Stevens was developed for the guys at Red River during wartime,” he said about World War II. “Many very industrial people—military officers, teachers—lived there. They were good citizens.”

Woolridge said he’s still peeling back layers to the history of the Dunbar area. “I didn’t realize how little I knew about my neighborhood.”

George Haskins’ older brother, Dan Haskins, a longtime Texarkana educator, remembers the day when students left Dunbar for all-white Texas High School.

- “I went to bed one night as a Buffalo and woke up as a Tiger,” he said of the 1968 integration.

Dan Haskins was a graduate of Dunbar’s Class of 1948 and a teacher at Dunbar during integration. He integrated with the students, becoming a coach and math teacher at Texas High School.

“It didn’t go as smoothly as it could have. There was no discussion or preparation made,” Dan Haskins said. “They were the minority and they felt like they were invading the territory of others.”

Dan Haskins, who retired from Texarkana Independent School District in 1988 as an assistant superintendent, said as time went on the feelings of “shock and suspicion dissipated.”

The Website, www.dunbartexarkana.org, has information as far back as the Class of 1926. Woolridge wants to go back farther, to the Class of 1919.

The Class of 1926’s motto was “Deeds, Not Words.” Its page on the Website has class rolls, reunion and graduation exercise entries.

Bettye Odom-Dorsey, a 1959 graduate of Dunbar, said her father was in the military when she attended Dunbar her junior and senior years. She attended Liberty-Eylau’s Grandview school in her elementary years.

“It’s where the L-E Pre-K Center is now,” she said of the elementary, about which she wishes she knew more.

She said she’s talked to her granddaughter about the history of Dunbar and Grandview.

“It’s beyond her comprehension what occurred when I was her age. When she saw the pictures of the dogs and water hoses, she thought it was somewhere like Africa or Haiti,” said Dorsey, who lived in Japan in the early 1970s. “I remember my sister wearing white patent leather shoes and socks to school and the contrast between her clothes and others” was striking.

Dorsey hopes her grandchildren will want to know more about the past and that “others can come up with old school records” to complete the history.

Eunice Love, Class of 1959, agrees and wants the Website to serve as an “educational tool.”

“I hope it inspires young people to become more active in the present-day situations,” said Love, who was a TISD educator for 37 years.

George Haskins agrees.

“We want to take pride and teach the history to the younger generation. History has no age barrier. Whether you’re 90 or 9 years old, you can read and understand,” he said.

To participate in the history project, e-mail dunbartexarkana@yahoo.com or contact Woolridge at 903-831-3471.