School reunions usually happen every ten years where members of the student body come together and fill each other in on their lives and reminisce about their school days. Another ten years go by and they do it all over again.
But Carver Center is a different story. Every other year, the students who walked the halls of the building located at 321 W. Albert come together for a three-day celebration, reuniting with former classmates that are considered more like family.
The reunion, however, is much more than just “catching up” with one another and reminiscing-it’s the collective effort to keep that portion of Pampa’s history remembered, educating those who may not know exactly what that now-abandoned building represents.
Before the Carver Center housed the Pampa ISD administration until its transition to the old Albertson’s building on Hobart, the Center was a K-12 school for non-white children from 1930 until its closing in 1968.
Digging further into the early history of Pampa, the neighborhood that is known as Prairie Village was actually an all-white neighborhood and the black community was segregated to the east in the neighborhood that the Carver Center sits.
While there may not be a lot of information about those days, the folks who lived there during that time can tell you their own stories and experiences and the Southside Senior Citizens Center can also shed light on a past that seems long forgotten.
Carol Wilbon attended Carver Center until she and her family moved to Phoenix in 1960 and is part of one of the earliest generations that graced the hallways during its operation.
“We were all under one roof in that red building right over there,” she said, pointing to the school on the other side of the park. “That was our school and J.C. Randall was our principal. He wasn’t just a principal, he was like our father. The whole school was like our family. We were segregated then.”
Efton Gary was a former student of Carver Center and wrote a book, Reflections of a Black Man, telling the many stories of his time here in Pampa and attending the school.
“We looked at it and knew that somebody always had something better than we did, but it made everyone here stronger,” Efton said. “You can look at all this and say, well it is terrible, but at the same time you can reach in between and see all the goodness in there too.”
While there’s no escaping the reality that those days truly did exist in what may feel like your own backyard, to be able to hear the stories, both good and bad, by those who were at the forefront of it all is humbling to say the least.
The Carver Center reunion is an event that tells a part of Pampa’s history that can’t be read in books, coming straight from those who lived during that time, their voices that have carried through the generations to the young ones who have only seen the red, brick building from the outside in passing.
“We look forward to coming to this every other year,” Carol said. “I started this in 2007 and retired from it in 2013 to pass it along to the younger generation. We do this every other year to keep the family together and help the legacy live on and never forget where we come from. We made it.”
