FRANKLIN, Tenn. (WTVF) — Ambitious plans are underway to move a piece of history across miles. It'll bring a story to a generation who's never heard it.
"We were a small community," said Roy W. Brown. "We kinda bonded even before we got to school because we all went to church together."
A 36-year veteran of the Franklin Police Department, Brown said so much of who he's become is owed to a little school out on Duplex Road in Spring Hill.
"I started in 1955," he remembered. "Just a little country school. Tin roof. No indoor plumbing whatsoever. We drew our water from the well."
Despite what they didn't have, the teachers worked hard to lead the children toward success at the Lee-Buckner School.
"I lived probably three, four miles from the other high schools out there," said Brown. "For reasons I didn't understand, we weren't able to attend that school. We just knew they were white kids, and we were Black kids. We didn't quite understand cause those were our friends. We played in the evening after school got out. We played together, but we couldn't go to school together."
At the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County, president Bari Beasley and vice president Meg Hershey explain when this place was built in the 1920s it was called a Rosenwald School.
"Rosenwald Schools were created in the deep south to educate African American children before desegregation," said Beasley. "It was a partnership between Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald. There were about 5,000 of these schools built. Sometimes they would have books with whole chapters torn out because they would receive the books after they were passed down from white schools."
"Integration in this area didn't really happen until the mid-60s," added Hershey. "After integration, a lot of these schools would have closed. Now, it's in a state where we wanna bring it back to its former glory."
This summer, the Heritage Foundation is looking to take the Lee Buckner School and move it twelve miles to downtown Franklin to be part of Franklin Grove Estate and Gardens. It's a space being developed for art, education, and history.
"We do have lawyers that came out of that little Duplex community," Brown said. "It's very important to me to preserve that. Engineers, police officers, fire fighters all came from this little school. This is where we came from."
