Prior to the Cobb County Board of Education voting in favor of desegregation on March 1, 1965, there were legal cases and people in favor of the Civil Rights movement who made a difference to help abolish segregation in public facilities and ease the way for others like them on a national and local level.

Notable cases like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education to significant people like the first African American students attending what had been an all-white high school are some of the many examples that created a path for the future of Cobb County’s African American current leaders and community.

Before Plessy v. Ferguson, there was Professor A. Tolliver

In the Plessy v. Ferguson case on May 18, 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that transportation and public facilities that were separate but equal were constitutional. This decision legally allowed institutions like schools to become separated by race. 

Before this major ruling, Marietta’s community had decided in 1892 through a unanimous decision to create the Marietta city schools. Two years later, the first two schools were built. While the schools at the time weren’t constructed equally, Lemon Street Elementary was a wooden framed building for about 480 students.  Professor A. Tolliver became principal of the city’s first funded black school as noted in Peggie R. Elgin’s Centennial Celebration Marietta City Schools 1892-1992. Several years later this building would become Lemon Street High School, one of the first high schools for Black students in the city of Marietta and surrounding areas.

Harold Street School and its First Teacher

The first funded black school eventually became old and the African American community in Cobb decided on using a local old church to become its first secondary school. Harold Street School opened in 1925 in Marietta blocks away from present-day Marietta Square and Switzer Library. In Generations of Black Life in Kennesaw and Marietta Georgia, Patrice Shelton Lassiter recounts that Ursula Maxwell Jenkins was the first African American teacher of the school and helped set up the school. Jenkins was an advocate for African American students and a graduate of Spelman College, a historically Black college in Atlanta that is “ a global leader in the education of women of African descent.”

First Principal at Cobb’s First Black High School

Four years later, Marion J. Woods, a graduate of Georgia State College in Savannah, joined Jenkins at Harold Street School. According to an article in Marijan Pejic’s book, Dr. Thomas A. Scott, professor emeritus of history at Kennesaw State University, states that Woods became the principal in 1929 of a new high school funded by the Rosenwald Fund. 

The Rosenwald Fund was a matching grant program created to expand educational opportunities for African Americans throughout the South. This foundation was established by Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck and Co., known as Sears, in collaboration with Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute. The fund helped construct two other schools before Lemon Street High School: Jonesville School (1920) and Acworth School (1924). The new high school was first named Marietta Industrial High School and then changed to Perkinson High School. It eventually became known as Lemon Street High School in Marietta. 

Under the leadership of Woods, the school became an important part of the African American communities in many surrounding towns including Kennesaw, Powder Springs, Acworth, and Cartersville since it was one of the few high schools in northern Georgia.

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During Woods' years as principal, he started extracurricular activities for the students attending the school as well as for those who weren’t. In 1931, he started a football team for the boys. Many of them had never played football before yet they had a winning record. Both MHS and LSHS football teams were excellent, to the point where Lemon Street’s team was allowed to use the local stadium for their championship games. The whole community, all races, came to watch those games. Years later, a girls' basketball team was formed.

After the milestone case of 1954 in American civil rights history, many including Woods and members of the local NAACP continued to request adequate learning materials, furniture, and schools for African American students. Before Woods left the school in 1962, the student population had increased. At this point, the school was considered an accredited institution. During this time period, many black schools weren’t accredited due to the lack of resources and courses needed. Eventually, there would be changes in history that would bring all students together.

Brown v. Board of Education Gave Hopes to MHS’ First Black Students

On May 17, 1954, Brown v. Board of Education ruled that separate educational facilities for white students and African American students were deemed unconstitutional, a decision which overruled Plessy v. Ferguson. A decade later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The act was later amended to include sexual orientation and gender identity. 

While Brown v. BOE ruled that facilities should desegregate, it wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act that many schools started to do so. In Ruth Carbonaette Yow’s book Students of the Dream Resegregation in a Southern City, she tells the story of Daphne Delk’s experience integrating into her tenth-grade class in Marietta High School in 1964. After attending Lemon Street High School, Delk decided to apply to become a student at Marietta High School by sending a letter to the Board of Education to allow this transfer.

Yow adds a quote by Delk on how as a student she hoped to show her peers that “...if I could make it through and open the doors for others,” maybe they could too. Delk was a student who would ask herself, “Why–why can’t I?”, a question that she and many other trailblazers during the Segregation Era, Civil Rights Movement, and today ask themselves.

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Celebrate Black History and African American accomplishments at your local library

Through various educational institutions like schools, museums, and libraries, students alongside adults continue to push themselves to learn more about various topics including history. Cobb County Public Library offers all residents and visitors resources and programs to pique into their curiosity or help them research topics that interest them. See below for ways that you can learn more about African American people and history.
 

• Books are a great way to discuss various topics with your family and friends:
  • Cobb Library Black History Month Booklist
  • Books and interviews by Dr. Thomas A Scott

• Attend an event celebrating African American/Black history:
  • Black History Month Programs at Cobb Library
  • Cobb County Black History Month Events

• Use library resources and databases to help with your research about African American History:
  • Georgia Room (located at the Switzer Library)
  • African American Studies Center
  • Ancestry Library Edition (only at the library)
  • Black Life in America
  • Black Freedom Struggle in the US
  • Dictionary of African Biography
  • Dictionary of African Family Names
  • Encyclopedia of African American History (1619-1895)
  • Encyclopedia of African American History (1896-Present)
  • Salem History (various African American resources)
  • Voyages: TransAtlantic Slave Trade Database

• Non-library sites for more information about Lemon Street Schools:
  • KSU Scholarly Online Access Repository (SOAR) - The Lemon Street Schools Oral History Collection