The Lost Class Of ’71: Remembering Shadowlawn

The other day while riding out Old Brownsville Road, where so much has changed due to development, I decided to take a ride through the Shadowlawn community to see what it looks like these days. To my surprise much was still standing, including the old Shadowlawn Grocery, which had still been open back in 1979-1980 when I went to Shadowlawn Middle School, a forbidden temptation to us students, as we were not allowed to go there.
But when I went to school there, I heard rumors as well, rumors that spoke of a Shadowlawn High School, perhaps a predominantly Black school. Teachers I asked said that Shadowlawn had always been a middle school. Still, there was the spray-painted slogan “Soul Power” on a yellow road sign along Shadowlawn Road.
I would learn the truth in my junior year of high school at Bartlett, when looking through the yearbook from 1971, I saw that the majority of Black students pictured were said to have “transferred from Shadowlawn.” More research on my part uncovered a sad and surprising story. There had indeed been a Shadowlawn High School. Their mascot (like ours) had been the Cougar. They had a marching band, a choir, football, basketball, baseball and track, and even social clubs patterned after fraternities. Unexpectedly, these students’ school was closed by the stroke of a judge’s pen, and then the memory of the school was forgotten, perhaps even actively suppressed,
Shadowlawn School had been built as a first through eighth-grade school in 1958, a consolidation of any number of tiny Black elementary schools, most of which were beside Black churches who had campaigned for their establishment. The main building burned in a lightning fire in 1964, but was quickly rebuilt, despite the NAACP’s request that displaced students be placed in predominantly-white schools instead. In 1967, Superintendent George Barnes told the school board that Shadowlawn would need to “add a ninth grade and grow into a high school.” He offered no explanation for why that would be needed, but Barnes was a man who usually got what he wanted.
In the fall of 1967, when Black students attempted to enroll in Bartlett High School under Freedom of Choice, they were told that Bartlett had no room for them, but that there was room at Shadowlawn. Shadowlawn would add the 10th grade in 1968-1969, and the 11th grade in 1969-1970, but in August of 1970, the U. S. District Courts issued orders with regard to integration in the Shelby County Schools, and while most Black high school students were permitted to remain in their existing schools, two Black high schools were ordered closed, Capleville and Shadowlawn. The merger with Bartlett was not easy, as the Shadowlawn students did not wish to attend Bartlett, and many of the Bartlett students did not want the Shadowlawn students there. Merging was especially hard for those who had been cheerleaders at Shadowlawn, and were not allowed to be at Bartlett. Interestingly, the Shadowlawn cheerleaders were pictured in Bartlett’s 1971 annual as a separate group. Despite the establishment of Brotherhood United, a club intended to create dialogue between the races, fights were common, and at least some students from Shadowlawn were suspended for singing Shadowlawn’s alma mater at a Bartlett school assembly. What I could never find were any pictures, yearbooks, letter jackets, trophies, or any other mementos of Shadowlawn High School. Former students and teachers I spoke with either had nothing, or could not find what they thought they had. Further court orders in 1971 would make Shadowlawn High School a middle school, and at least one teacher told me that things from Shadowlawn High School were taken out behind the school by the middle school administration and destroyed systematically. Today the school is the Bartlett 9th Grade Academy.
In my high school years, there was a small barber shop in the same building with the grocery, where some of my friends used to get their haircuts. The Shadowlawn gym was treated like a community center in winter. It was almost always open, and became the scene of pick-up basketball games, although I never was sure whether the gym was supposed to be open or if someone had picked the lock. Learning about the legacy of Shadowlawn High School helped me understand why the surrounding community treated the gymnasium as their community center. They had once had a spirit of ownership and pride in Shadowlawn High School, the school which never produced a graduating class.