WARFIELD SCHOOL SPIRIT ENDURES: South Guthrie Landmark Celebrates 100 Years of Community Service

BY SHANA THORNTON

100 years ago, in 1922, Black neighbors and friends in South Guthrie walked to a new school together for the first time. They were as young as five years old, and the eldest among them was about sixteen. The students of the Warfield School, as it was named then, were in grades first through eighth.

Rural Black communities throughout the South needed schools during the Reconstruction era and beyond. The town of South Guthrie, situated on Tennessee’s border with Kentucky, was one of many in Montgomery County. There, the Warfield School was constructed as part of the Rosenwald Fund initiative to provide an improved education to Black communities, primarily agrarian, throughout the South.

THE ROSENWALD FUND – BUILDING COMMUNITIES

Author, educator and orator Booker T. Washington wanted to create schools for Black communities in the South after the Civil War. Into the 20th century, many Black children still attended schools in dilapidated buildings or shared space with local churches and lodges.

In 1910, Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish clothing merchant who went on to serve as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Sears, Roebuck & Company, read Washington’s book Up from Slavery and within the next year, they forged a friendship. In 1912, Washington asked Rosenwald to serve on the Board of Directors for the Tuskegee Institute, and Rosenwald kept that position for the rest of his life.

Eventually, Washington asked Rosenwald to help with building schools. Sears, Roebuck & Company was known for selling pre-cut home-building kits, which were delivered by train across the United States. After increased pressure from Washington and seeing an opportunity to use the building kits, in 1917, Rosenwald created the Julius Rosenwald Fund to help build schools for Black children in the South. Communities could choose school designs based on their needs and ability to fundraise for supplies and builders. The Rosenwald Fund was set up so that communities covered part of the cost of the school's construction and were directly involved in the entire process.

In total, Montgomery County residents constructed nearly twenty Rosenwald school buildings across the county, but the one in South Guthrie is the only still standing, now as a community center. In its original incarnation, the Warfield School welcomed students from 1922 until 1968, when the City of Clarksville integrated its school system and closed it down.

“YOU ARE HERE TO LEARN”

“One thing that sticks in my mind is that it was a little tworoom school with a kitchenette area, and we had outdoor toilet facilities. One was for boys, and one for the girls,” Deborah Saunders-Johnson recalled. She attended the Warfield School as a student for first and second grades (1958-60), and then again for the eighth grade (1965-66). The main difference she can recall between those years is that in the eighth grade, Montgomery County began catering hot lunches for students every day.

“You had one teacher for the four different classes,” Saunders- Johnson remembered. “The first through the fourth grade, a lady by the name of Mrs. [Delonia] Edwards, she taught that… And then, a lady by the name of Mrs. Bertha [Rives] Quarles taught the fifth through the eighth grades.”

When asked if she could recall how many classmates she had in each grade, Saunders-Johnson said, “I can’t remember off the top of my head, but just give me time, and I’ll remember everybody. Let’s see... That’s two, Patricia. Three, Joyce.” She became quieter, murmuring, reciting inaudibly. Then, after some thought, “About ten of us altogether.”

Saunders-Johnson conferred with another former student, Ronald Johnson, who attended the Warfield School from first through sixth grades (1962-68), until it was closed due to desegregation. “I’ve never really gotten that school out of my system,” Johnson said. “I think everyone who went there has the same memories of it being a great place to go to school.” He remembered that the students sat at long tables designated for each grade with ten or more students, totaling about forty students per class.

The students were all from the surrounding community of South Guthrie, and they walked to school together every day. “I’m still friends with pretty much all of them. We have some that no longer live in this city, and two of them are deceased,” Saunders- Johnson said.

South Guthrie is a small community, and in fact, Saunders-Johnson’s husband is Ronald Johnson’s cousin. Both stressed how involved the parents were in the school. “We lived really close to each other,” Johnson said. “The same people you played with in the summer, you went to school with in the fall. In the mornings, there would be a street full of kids all going to the school. We were taught that the older ones watched over the little ones.” They reminisced about how often one of their mothers walked with them for a stretch, and then another mother would take up the walk along the way.

“When you got there, naturally, it was pretty structured. You had to pull off your coats and get to your classroom,” said Saunders-Johnson, describing a typical day at the school. “You had to give the Pledge of Allegiance, and from there, you started your course. Usually, first grade started off first.” Each subsequent grade followed with coursework. Due to that, she thought that the next grade “wasn’t a difficult class because you had already heard a little bit of it before.”

Johnson recalled how the teachers stressed recitation during daily devotionals, as well as etiquette for entering a room, greeting elders and eating properly. He also described the assemblies in the spring and during the Christmas holidays, when teachers would construct a stage for performances. In May, the eldest students erected a maypole and the

school hosted spring festivals. “Mrs. Quarles was a poet,” Johnson explained. “During those assemblies, she would always have a student recite a poem that she wrote.” Johnson said that all the students felt equipped because of the one-on-one time that teachers took with their students.

Saunders-Johnson, who went on to graduate from Austin Peay State University with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing (’74) and an MBA from the University of Indianapolis (formerly Indiana Central University, ’83), attributed her academic preparation for high school and college to her two teachers, Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Quarles.

“The teachers were adamant that you were going to learn,” she said. “They took the time with you to see that you learned before you could advance on. It wasn’t this, ‘Oh, you didn’t get it today? Just go ahead on to the next chapter.’ No. You got it. They made sure that you got it, so that was really nice to see teachers really care.”

After the eighth grade, Saunders- Johnson went on to attend Burt High School and Todd County High School. “Going to Burt, I felt equipped because the teachers there at Warfield always emphasized that we should do extremely well. They kept focusing on, ‘I want you to do better. Do your best.’ So, when I went [to Burt High], I felt that academically, I was ready. I think most of us did. Sure, when you first got there, it was something new, something different, but you got in there and developed friends. The teachers were pretty much the same as the Warfield teachers in emphasizing, ‘You are here to learn.’”

Johnson agreed. “They really did value their time with the kids,” he said of his teachers. “The families knew that. You know, most of us who went to school there, our families also went there. My father passed in 2019, and as I was going through his things, I found his report card from 1940.” Johnson went on to graduate from Clarksville High in 1973.

A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST

Current visitors can walk across the same original pine wood floors inside the schoolroom replica that Mrs. Quarles walked across as she taught classes. Roll books are on display in a case. Desks form rows in front of the blackboard where photographs of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are framed on either side.

The actual Warfield School and larger structure was eventually renovated and is now known as the South Guthrie Community Center. The restoration was completed in 2013 by architect Lane Lyle of Lyle-Cook- Martin Architects, who won the Chapter Award for his architectural design work from the American Institute of Architects' Middle Tennessee Chapter.

“We thought we had a winner with this design, and it turned out to be,” Lyle said. “It was the last project I did as the owner of this firm. In hindsight, this project was sort of the high watermark of my career.”

The South Guthrie Community Center contains a replica of the original classroom, as well as modern meeting places where people can gather for public and private events. The current building has a full kitchen, a patio, a playground, a large activities room and more.

“I knew nothing about Rosenwald schools when we undertook the project. Zero. I’d never even heard of them,” Lyle said. “I think it’s probably one of the most fantastic stories in this part of the world, and one of the more obscure.”

The design team went through archival photographs from Fisk University and members of the community in order to bring such an important place back to life. The county also conducted a series of meetings with the community about how to renovate the space. The process became shared by the people of South Guthrie, and they decided to restore the original schoolhouse as part of the new community center.

“It was a small project and simple, but it all came together so well from every point of view,” Lyle said. “The actual building itself had no foundation, it was built on the ground. We had to underpin the whole thing, jack it up, pour footings and put a block foundation under it. So, that was a challenge.”

Rosenwald schools were built from kits containing ready-made materials cut to size, based on plans ranging from one to eight classrooms. The Warfield School was a two-room design, specifically built from the plan designated for “East-West Orientation.” Depending on the site, the school building’s orientation changed in order to utilize sunlight, since most of the schools had no electricity. They used a wood-burning or coal-burning stove for heat and natural ventilation.

In the process of designing the schoolroom exhibition space in 2013, the design team, including Frank Lott (of BLF Marketing at the time, now Executive Director of the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center), acquired several vintage desks at a flea market. They noticed various names carved into the wooden desktops, some with dates from 1914 onward. One name was Lane Marable.

Lott recalled that Lane Lyle’s name was Lane M. Lyle, and soon discovered that the “M” did, in fact, stand for Marable. Lyle’s grandfather was Lane Marable, an educator who coincidentally was Chairman of the Montgomery County School Board during the construction of Burt High School. At the time, he received significant pushback for insisting on the construction of an all-Black high school for residents of Clarksville and the surrounding counties.

Through the passage of time, Lyle sat down at the same desk where his grandfather carved his name. By serendipity, the desk made its way to the Warfield School, one that was so important to the Black residents of South Guthrie – many of whom would eventually attend Burt High School.

The Rosenwald Fund was so popular and effective that over 4,977 new schools were constructed by the time the fund ended in 1932. Very few of those schools are still preserved today. The South Guthrie Community Center celebrates a rare 100-year milestone this year and serves as a testament to the importance of these schools in United States history.

Ode to Youth

By Bertha Rives Quarles

Youth of today, bon voyage! Opportunities await you, A bid for every stage. There is no time like the present. Be grateful, love and be pleasant. Youth of today, remember thy Creator, You need divine guidance, Patience, faith, and self-control on your way to a profitable goal. Youth of today, bon voyage!

A TEACHER’S “ODE TO YOUTH”

Bertha Rives Quarles taught at nine elementary schools, including the Warfield School, during her teaching career for Clarksville-Montgomery County. Born in 1902 in Christian County, Kentucky, Quarles came from a family that focused on education. Her parents petitioned the Christian County School Board for a new school for Black children when she was in elementary school. This fostered young Bertha’s lifelong dedication to education.

As an educator, Quarles not only taught in elementary schools, but she also conducted night classes for adults who had dropped out of school or never received an opportunity to attend school until later in life. Her “dedication to learning and working with youth did not go unnoticed,” according to Joe Ann Burgess and Phil Winchell Petrie in their book, The Odyssey of Burt High School. In 1962, the Clarksville Chamber of Commerce awarded Bertha Rives Quarles the Distinguished Service Award “for outstanding devotion to young people.” She was an amateur poet and dedicated some of her verses, including “Ode to Youth,” to the children that she taught.

By the time she passed away in 1990, “Quarles generously shared her knowledge and passion for learning, thereby affecting the lives of thousands of people living in rural Montgomery County,” as noted by Burgess and Petrie.