05/27/2022
RP … Coming up from Perkins and Melrose elementary schools to 16th Street Middle, Cynthia Jenkins was part of a community that knew everyone, their telephone number, their mom and their aunt.
“That’s how we were,” said Jenkins, now 69. “We were so connected. And then after that we were disconnected.”
Fifty-three years ago, Pinellas County’s last segregated class was getting ready to graduate together.
Gibbs High remained the district’s last predominantly Black high school — until many of Jenkins’ classmates received notices that they were being transferred to predominantly white schools for their senior year. The school district was under court order to desegregate schools.
Jenkins was fortunate enough to stay, but her classmates scrambled to use relatives’ addresses so they could remain zoned at Gibbs. Those who had to leave wept, and she wept with them.
At their new schools, her friends were ridiculed, called racist names and treated unequally.
Their grades fell.
“We had high hopes and lofty ideas for our futures despite knowledge there were individuals who did not hold those ideas,” Jenkins said. “We stand 52 years later still going strong.”
Read more about the reunion at the link in our bio.
✍️ : Colleen Wright, Hannah Critchfield & 📷 : Critchfield / Tampa Bay Times