Day 8: Carl B. Hutcherson Elementary School, 1960
by Gloria Simon
“An appeasement to place a school for Black children down in a bottom was actually a mountaintop blessing.”
I vaguely remember my father driving me to Robert S. Payne Elementary School. At the time, I was too young to understand anything about overcrowding schools, being too small, and so forth. All I knew was there was talk about a new elementary school for Black kids. Well, that sounds exciting. New is always supposed to be better than the old. There was going to be a new elementary school, and it would be in my neighborhood. And I remember there were neighborhood children who rode with us to Payne. But now they said we could walk to school. How cool would that be? We walked everywhere, so now I'm going to walk to school.
I lived in the White Rock Hill neighborhood, and I lived during a time when every family was your family. Everyone supported you and talked to you. They asked about your family, talked about the weather, and invited you to come in and get a snack. Walking to school would not only be fun, it would be kind of cool to speak to all the people along the way.
So off I went to a brand- new elementary school, Carl B. Hutcherson Elementary School. It was named for the first Black man on the Lynchburg City School Board. Mr. Carl B. Hutcherson, Sr., was well-known and quite respected in our world.1 A school named for him would be extremely special. It took looking through the lens of an adult to realize the other side of that specialness.
As an adult, I realized that while I walked to Carl B. Hutcherson Elementary School, I also walked past another school, White Rock Elementary School, which was not at capacity for its number of students. However, it would not allow a little girl wrapped in my skin to walk through the front doors. This was the first reality: I walked right past a school with space for me.
The next reality. The location of my brand-new, beautiful school was downhill to a pit. I heard my parents talking. At that time, you did not sit in the room when there were adults having grown-folks’ conversations. But I managed to get close enough to hear them saying, I can't believe they have to walk down that hill and up that hill, and the City didn't even put a handrail on that sidewalk. I heard talk about city council and school board meetings. And I heard my parents saying, We're going to get together to get these kids a handrail. They put us in the new school, where we walked past one school and went down a hill where we weren't even worthy of a handrail. The parents attended meetings, and they got a handrail installed for us.
The next realization was that the school at the bottom of the hill was right beside a graveyard, White Rock Cemetery. As children, we would get teased by older kids to be careful on the days that it rained because, you know those caskets may wash down and roll over onto the playground while you're outside playing. There was no barrier, no wall, no fence between the cemetery and the property for the school. Did a casket ever wash out and roll down the hill? Of course not. Did the younger kids going to that school believe those stories and fear every time it rained? Of course we did.
At my age of 71, when I reflect on my time at Carl B. Hutcherson Elementary School, I can still see the faces of Mrs. Waters, Mrs. Joyner, and Mrs. Taylor. Those were my elementary teachers who made a difference in my life. Not only did they teach the content before them, but they also taught expectations. They expected their students to learn and to behave. I see the face of Ms. Taylor in the office. Just like the teachers, she set high expectations for how we were to behave whenever we were stopping in the office.
They knew my parents as Bill and Helen, and I did not want them to have to call one of them because Gloria was misbehaving. I was raised in an era when it was unacceptable for a child to treat an adult disrespectfully. And since I did not have a side as a child, I would not have been able to voice my opinion if one of those teachers had contacted my parents. I was expected to be respectful and learn.
Mrs. Waters. Mrs. Joyner. Mrs. Taylor. Ms. Taylor. I remember them as well-dressed, soft-spoken, so very smart, and caring. Also, I recall that they could give you "a look" that caused you to immediately stop inappropriate behavior and refocus.
As an adult, I realized that Carl B. Hutcherson Elementary School provided me with a strong educational foundation. Any child who had the good fortune to sit in the classroom of these exceptional Black women educators is blessed to have had the opportunity to learn from them.
An appeasement to place a school for Black children down in a bottom was actually a mountaintop blessing. I am so grateful for my time spent in the pit at the bottom of the hill beside a cemetery.
Editor’s Note: The Carl B. Hutcherson School was built in 1960 and is located at Harvey and High Streets in the White Rock area of the city. Lynchburg City Schools still operates this school today as the Carl B. Hutcherson Early Learning Center for Pre-K students and early childhood special education programs. This spring, the Lynchburg School Board renamed the school "Hutcherson Academy." The name change allows it to receive Title 1 funds for Pre-K students. Title 1 provides "financial assistance through state educational agencies to school divisions and public schools with high numbers or percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic content and achievement standards."2
Gloria Robinson Simon’s educational career has included K-12 positions from the classroom to administration. She is the Assistant Director of Admissions at the University of Lynchburg, where she is pursuing her doctorate in Educational Leadership. Gloria is the proud mother of two daughters, and the grandmother of one grandson, and two granddaughters.
Lynchburg News and Advance, 1965:
Thank you for this article Ms Simon! I've visited the White Rock Cemetery a number of times over the last few years as I've explored the history of Lynchburg. I had seen the Carl B Hutcherson Early Learning Center, but I did not know anything about it. I always thought it a bid odd the way it's tucked down the hill. Getting to know you and your elementary school story enriches my understanding of our city and its people.