Years of Service, History Under One Roof
Appalachian News-Express
By Mary Music, Staff Writer
June 1, 2007

Built in an area once known as "String Town," WestCare's Perry A. Cline Emergency Homeless Shelter and Community Involvement Center facility has serviced students, senior citizens and the homeless for decades.

The history of the building, which was constructed by the Works Progress Administration in 1937 and will officially be named as a Kentucky Landmark on June 3, also carries the history of Pike County's black community.

WestCare Community Involvement Coordinator Amber Campbell worked to get the school recognized as a Kentucky Landmark as a service to Pike County's black community. The recognition is long-overdue, she said.

The Pike County Historical Society reported that the first black school in Kentucky came to Pike County in 1875, when segregation forced black students into the outskirts of towns.

Jeff "Dobbin" Owens, who worked at the Liberty Theater in Pikeville, reported to the historical society that a one-room school educated black students on Bypass Road, but the school closed after one year of service.

In 1929, a two story building, Northside High, was constructed on the Redale Road property. The unaccredited school educated students in the first through tenth grades, and those who wanted a higher education had to travel long distances to take classes.

Owens' wife, 92-year-old Harriet Owens, who lives near the homeless shelter, claims racism caused the arson of Northside High in 1932.

Town Mountain Road didn't exist in those days, and "String Town" residents traveled by boat to get into Pikeville's business section, where the coming and going of passenger trains provided entertainment for family outings. Black students had to attend the Liberty School in Williamson, and the trip was an all-day journey that included a 10 to 12 mile trek through a creek, Owens said.

Owens, a West Virginia native who moved into the community when she was in elementary school, remembers segregation and the racial hatred that was prominent in those days. She remembers when people were lynched on Pike County hillsides because of interracial or homosexual relationships and she remembers how people "kicked and kicked and kicked" when she and her husband bought their home in a predominately white neighborhood.

She says she forgives people who were blinded by their culture back then and she says people treat her differently now.

"If you're trained to eat beans every day, then you eat beans every day, don't you? That's all you know is beans," she said. "In them days, there was a lot of hatred on both sides, but they'd go to church and called themselves Christians."

After integration took place in 1956, black teachers couldn't teach, Owens said, because white students were in the classrooms, but the Perry A. Cline School educated black students in the first through twelfth grades until 1966.

During World War II, Walta Mae Duncan, who taught at the Perry A. Cline school in 1943, helped the school get an award from the U.S. Department of Defense for gathering hemp as part of the war effort, the Pike County Historical Society reported.

Another former student, Ralph Wilson, graduated in 1950 and became the first black man to enter Marquette University on a basketball scholarship before he returned to Pike County to coach at Pikeville High School. Wilson, who is scheduled to speak during the Sunday ceremony, told Pike County Historical Society researchers about the resentment that black students felt when they had to use "hand-me-down" books and wait until other schools finished basketball practice before they could play.

The Perry A. Cline School was designated as the state's "most progressive school" in 1944. It closed 22 years later and was reopened by the Pikeville Housing Authority as a senior citizens center and community center.

The school was converted into a homeless shelter in 1992 and WestCare Kentucky has managed the facility since last year.

In addition to housing the area's homeless, the facility serves as a community meeting place for assistance groups hosted by area agencies.

The community is invited to attend the Kentucky Landmark dedication at 3 p.m. on Sunday, June 3. Food will be provided.

For more information call (606) 432-9442.

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