History of Lee High echoes past, parallels today

Jim Vickrey, a Montgomery native, knew years ago that the discussion of changing the name of Robert E. Lee High School and removing the general’s statue out front was inevitable, but he did not realize it would come in an avalanche.

Following the June 17 shooting of nine black worshipers at the hand of a self-proclaimed racist in Charleston, South Carolina, controversy flared up across the country over the Confederate Battle Flag, statues of Southern generals in public settings and anything that might represent white supremacy.

Co-author and general editor for the new book “Echoes of Robert E. Lee High School: The First Decade 1955-1965,” Vickrey and several other classmates and faculty from the graduating class of 1960 wrote about their experiences during a time of racial unrest.

The memoir marks the school’s 60th anniversary with a telling of its history.

Vickrey, former president of the University of Montevallo, hopes the book, which acts as a time-capsule full of memories and history, shows the need for policies to name and un-name certain building and institutions on an individual basis.

Take Lee High School. The question has been, should the name of a Confederate general be removed from an institution that now caters so strongly to black students?

Vickrey believes the name and the statue should remain and any decision to remove them should take into account the character of Lee as an educator rather than his association with the Confederacy.

“Even during the time of the civil rights movement, the naming of the school was controversial,” Vickrey said.

“Back then we had people saying the school was named Lee to protest the civil rights, but there is no evidence to that,” Vickrey said. “The decision to name the school was made in the early ’50s, years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott.”

The school board named the high school after Robert E. Lee for his character, not because he was a general, he added.

“He was a decorated individual in Southern history, but not just for fighting in the Confederacy,” Vickrey explained. “For most of his life, Lee was a college professor. He was the superintendent of West Point and died working on the campus of Washington College, now called Washington and Lee University in Virginia.”

Vickrey was 15 when he started high school at Lee in 1957. He graduated in 1960 when he was 18. He hopes the book also gives insight into the personal lives of students during that era

“It was a great time. It was the start of everything. That’s when the traditions began, the nicknames, the founding of the student paper and ended with integration,” Vickrey said.

The first three black students who integrated the previously all-white school wrote their accounts of what it was like to be at Lee for the book.

“They wrote very positive recollections of their time that year and they seemed to fit in well, although it was hard for them to make a lot of close friendships,” Vickrey said. “That’s what they felt they missed most from the experience.”

Much like today, where community and government officials are calling for the removal of symbols of the Confederacy, changes were made at Lee following the civil rights movement in 1964 to make the integration of black students more comfortable.

“I was proud to learn that even before integration, student school leaders were planning to try and avoid unnecessary provocation,” Vickrey said. “The band played Dixie less often, they put the Confederate uniforms away and the battle flag that hung in the gym was quietly removed.”

Lee’s second school principal, Clinton Carter, joined in the effort to write the book, which debuted Aug. 12 at NewSouth Books in Montgomery. Carter wrote the chapter on integration of the school, located the school’s first three African-American students and allowed them each to write an essay about their experiences at Lee.

“They talked about the trials and tribulations of being the first African-American students at the school, but they ended with some very positive comments about their experiences there,” Carter said.

“We decided whatever they wrote was what we would run. Whether it was positive or not, we wanted to put it in there. We didn’t edit them at all. One said a teacher failed her — whether true or not, I don’t know — that is her recollection, and we didn’t varnish any of it ...,” Carter explained.

For several years, Vickrey, Carter and Lee graduates, Roger Stifflemire, Kerry Palmer talked about memorializing the beginnings of the school.

“Some of us had written little essays and bits and pieces, and we decided to take our hand at writing a book just about the first 10 years,” Carter said. “We didn’t think we would have the time to do all the research past that time, and that turned out to be a good move on our part.”

The need for Lee High School originated to accommodate the influx of personnel moving into Maxwell and Gunter Air Force Base with their families. The schools were becoming overcrowded, so Lee High School, an all-white school, was built where it stands now on Ann Street.

Back in 1954, when the project was first considered, that area was known as East Montgomery.

“There wasn’t much else past the school back then,” Vickrey said. “That was the end of the commercial district. There used to be a drive-in theater just past there, but it was mostly country.”

Many changes have been made since then.

In fact, a major change occurred just years after the construction — Lee’s statue had not been original to the plan, but was moved there in 1960 from the intersection of Mount Meigs Road, Madison Avenue and Ann Street, where it had been placed in 1908.

The book also talks about the school’s successful band, sport programs, academics, what students did on the weekends and the authors’ personal memories.

“I have spent more time walking those halls in my mind and hearing the echoes of the voices there than anything else,” Vickrey said. “I returned for a hall of fame banquet and while I was walking the through the school, I had remembered teachers and experiences I had there.”

In fact, one of Vickrey’s strongest memories from Lee was during his graduating class’ baccalaureate speech in 1960 by a local minister. That memory is the origin behind the book’s title.

“Most public high schools back then had religious services. At our graduation, the sermon was about Echoes Lake on the Atlantic Coast where you speak into and you hear your voice back, but not just what you say. It comes back louder and in greater quality then when you spoke into it,” Vickrey said.

The analogy reflected the lives of each student graduating from Lee who would come back stronger and more successful.

Vickrey kept that speech all these years, finding the message hard to forget. He, like many of the book’s co-writers left Lee and became accomplished and successful in their fields of interest due to Lee’s curriculum.

Carter later became superintendent of Montgomery Public Schools.

Kerry Palmer, who heads the school at Trinity, is a 1990 graduate, and was drum major for three years at Lee and wrote the chapter on the band and the choral programs.

Lee’s marching band in 1955 was started by Johnny Long and was ranked the top marching band in the country, won several awards and even marched in a Chicago parade.

Roger Stifflemire, current principal of Prattville High School, was the former Lee Student Council president and graduated from Lee in 1990.

Award-winning nationally syndicated columnist and author Rheta Grimsley Johnson, a former Lee newspaper features editor, wrote the book’s foreword.

It took the authors about two years to research, write and complete the book before it was released this summer. They decided to dedicate the book to the school’s first principal, Tim Carlton.

NewSouth owns the rights to the books and the royalties from the books they sell will go toward the Montgomery Lion’s Club Charity Foundation.

Find out more at http://newsouthbooks.com/echoes.