Sunday, July 28, 2002

Crabs, ribs and classmates

By LYDA LONGA | News-Journal Staff Writer

The books at Campbell Street High School -- an all-black institution in the days of a segregated South -- were hand-me-downs from two other high schools that white children attended.

Some of the pages in the worn books were torn or missing, yet others were filled with scribblings that ranged from abstract cartoons to the names and telephone numbers of that week´s teen-age infatuation.

Yet Fredricka Flynt, a 1964 graduate of Campbell, said she wouldn´t have traded her years and her experiences at the all-black Daytona Beach high school for anything in the world.

“We were a great big family,” Flynt said Saturday afternoon as she, her husband, Robert Flynt, and a handful of friends enjoyed a picnic lunch of garlic crabs and corn on the cob. “It was a traditional black school that taught us about our heritage, and we learned the truth about blacks in this country. You just don´t see that in schools anymore.”

Though Campbell Street High School no longer exists -- closed in 1969 after segregated schools slowly began disappearing from the landscape of the South -- the casual observer would not have known that Saturday, as Flynt and at least 699 other Campbell graduates from around the country gathered at Bethune Point Park for the third homecoming celebration of a school that no one wants to forget.

“This was the only black high school for Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach,” said Matt Miley, who is credited with starting the gatherings, held every two years. “The school is no longer here, but I didn´t want people to forget what this school meant to us and how it helped us get through.”

Founded in 1884 and located on three different streets throughout its history, Campbell was the only high school available for black children who lived in Daytona Beach and Ormond Beach. Throughout the years the school educated generations of black families who made their homes in this part of Florida.

“I remember we had a high school -- Seabreeze High -- right across the street from our house,” said Robert Flynt, who graduated from Campbell in 1962. “But we weren´t allowed to go to it because it was for white kids. We accepted that. We were used to it then.”

Miley agreed, recalling that the books and other study materials that Campbell students used were the discarded ones from Mainland and Seabreeze high schools. A 1959 graduate of Campbell who now lives in St. Louis, Miley, a retired fire battalion chief, said he and his fellow classmates however, were never encouraged to feel sorry for themselves or believe that they were less than their white counterparts.

“We had inferior materials, but we turned out doctors and lawyers,” Miley said. “We maintained because our teachers cared about us and taught us that we were just as good and that we could accomplish whatever we wanted.

“And that´s the part of this school that can´t be forgotten,” Miley said.

So after years of simply dreaming about a Campbell reunion that would hopefully attract most of the school´s graduates, Miley finally made the leap in 1998, launching Campbell´s first gathering.

Saturday´s event counted roughly 700 graduates from all over the country who attended the high school between 1934 and 1969. The festivities began Thursday and wrap up today with religious services and a farewell reception.

Sylvester Slaughter, the oldest Campbell graduate to attend the festivities, was at Saturday´s picnic, tapping his feet to rhythm and blues and surrounded by his children.

The 86-year-old Slaughter, who graduated from Campbell in 1934, recalled his early years in Daytona Beach when blacks did not question the rules imposed upon them by a white society.

“We just went with the flow at the time,” Slaughter said. “We didn´t question it. When my three sons went to the school they didn´t question things either. They just accepted it. We were very respectful of what we were supposed to do in those days. But I´m sure glad things have changed and there´s a lot more opportunities now.”

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