Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Bygone days fuel group’s effort to save gym
Ollie Willis once shot a basketball so high it got lost above the lights.
“He let that thing go up off his fingers and it just kept going,” said the Rev. H. Earl Anderson. “It went out of sight.” The crowd waited. “Just for a second, nobody knew where the ball went,” said Anderson. “And then it comes down. Riiipppp! Nothin’ but net!”
The crowd roared back to life.
“Everybody was applauding and laughing,” said Anderson.
Such a shot was a rarity at black-school gymnasiums in south Arkansas in the segregated early 1950s, he said.
But the Lafayette School gym just south of Camden was special.
Built around 1950, the gym had a 22-foot-tall ceiling that allowed for lofty shots.
“In other gyms, the ceiling was so low they couldn’t arc a shot,” said Anderson. “Most of the schools played games outdoors on the ground.”
Anderson is president of Lafayette School Restoration Inc., which is trying to raise money to restore the gym so it can serve as the Lafayette Community Center.
The Lafayette School started in 1928 and closed in 1969 as Arkansas schools were desegregated. The gym is the only building that remains from Lafayette School.
Anderson is also the minister at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Camden.
He said the community center is going to be “stateof-the-art facility and second to none.”
The architect, Kwendeche of Little Rock, drew up plans for the building’s restoration and development of the 9-acre site, which would include a trail, outdoor tennis and basketball courts and a baseball diamond,
among other amenities.
Now, the restoration group needs to raise about $1 million to make all that happen. The effort has received a couple of grants, which provided money to put a new roof on the building, along with a new door and windows. But much more money is needed to finish the work, said Anderson.
The group’s online fundraiser at https://bit.ly/2U1jgi5 indicates $100,000 is the goal to restore the gym and clear the land by the fall of 2020, if possible. That work would include rerouting electrical wiring and installing new plumbing and new floors.
After the school closed in 1969, the property was sold. For a while, the old gym served as a machine shop.
The building was damaged by fire on July 7, 2006, according to Ouachita County real estate records.
Lafayette School Restoration Inc. bought the property in 2013 for about $13,000, according to the records.
“The gym itself is in need of much repair,” said Anderson, 84. “Only the front of it was brick and the rest of it is metal. It’s all rusted. That’s got to be redone and painted and everything.
“I’m just praying that the Lord will allow me to see this thing come to fruition,” he said. “It’s going to be a benefit not only to Camden but also to the state of Arkansas.”
The Camden city limits have grown to engulf the Lafayette School site.
The gym is on the Arkansas Register of Historic Places. It was built by Butler Manufacturing Co. of Kansas City, Mo., according to the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. Butler began by making steel garages for automobiles.
Anderson said the brick facade disguised a gym that looked like a Quonset hut.
But the Lafayette Eagles basketball team wasn’t about to complain.
“We appreciated it because it gave us a chance to get off the ground and get inside,” said Anderson. “Playing ball out on the ground is one thing, but playing inside is something else.”
Anderson wants the community center to be a place for everyone. He envisions kids going there after school, to play, study or get help from a tutor.
If adults need help reading or writing, tutors will be available for them, too, he said.
“Businesses want to know if we have a literate workforce,” said Anderson. “If there’s not a literate workforce, why should they come in?”
Anderson said the community center will be open to people of all races and nationalities. He’s hoping skills also will be taught there, such as welding.
Anderson is a 1954 graduate of Lafayette School.
He remembers the gym’s eccentricities at a time when things were separate but not equal.
For one thing, the floor would sweat, said Anderson.
It was tile on a concrete slab.
Sometimes the referees would stop basketball games because of condensation.
“They would have to put down sawdust, bring out mops and dry it up,” said Anderson.
Rain would make a racket on the metal roof.
“When it rained, it would get noisy inside,” said Anderson. “The insulation wasn’t that great and there was no AC in it. It could get hot in there.”
Still, it was the center of activity for the black community at the time.
“It was a wholesome social place for the community,” said Flossie Moore, 81, a 1955 graduate of Lafayette School. “We had no place to go. There was no entertainment. My parents weren’t going to go to any juke joints.”
Moore said she remembers poetry readings and choral performances in the gym. She said the free-throw line is still visible on the gym floor.
“I see the free-throw line and all my memories come back,” said Moore. “I can recall running from the high school building all the way to the gymnasium for assembly. I remember standing on that stage and reciting James Weldon Johnson’s poems.”
Moore said parents would go to the gym to see their children perform.
College students from Philander Smith and what is now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff would drive down to Camden for concerts in the gym, said Moore.
She remembers the Harlem Globetrotters playing in that gym, and donkey basketball games.
“There was one donkey named Harry Truman known to kick up and throw you off its back,” she said.
Moore was living in Ohio
when she heard the school had closed.
“The day that school closed I cried for a full day,” she said. “There was a love between teacher, parent and student, a love among all.”
The goals are gone. So are the bleachers. Lafayette School memorabilia has disappeared.
“There were many, many trophies that our basketball team won,” said Moore. “They were just thrown out.”
Moore said the restoration group got a $15,000 grant three years ago. That grant was from the Southwest Arkansas Planning and Development District.
This month, there was a smaller grant from Awesome Without Borders, which is part of the Harnisch Foundation.
“It’s an uphill battle because funding is so hard to come by,” said Moore. “We’ve stumbled. We’ve fallen. We’ve gotten up. You can’t stay down.”