Alum Remember B.F. Ford Years After it Closes

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NEW ALBANY, Miss.(WCBI)– New Albany High School, like all the high schools around northeast Mississippi, recently celebrated the graduation of the Class of 2015.

But Saturday,graduates from a bygone era got together to remember when New Albany was segregated.

The main building is now used for the local Head Start program. And the nearby gym is now home to the Boys and Girls Club of New Albany. But until integration in 1969, these buildings comprised the campus of the Union County Training Center, which later was renamed B.F Ford school. Larry Dykes was a member of the class of 1965 which is celebrating it’s 50th class reunion. He says segregation was something they just had to deal with.

“It was bad in that we were separate but not equal. We got the leftover books. We got the leftover materials and that kind of thing,” he recalls. “But our teachers were awesome. They went beyond those books to help us to the foundation for us so that we could survive”.

Sam Moseley graduated a year earlier, in 1964. He says he and many of his classmates couldn’t find work in New Albany when they graduated.

“Some of them went to college after graduation but a big portion of them left the south and went north where the jobs were plentiful,” he says .You know down here there was alot of agriculture and stuff like that farming and you didn’t have the opportunity to get into plants like we should have. So they went north Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, places like that Racine Wisconsin” Moseley notes.

In fact Constance Howard of the Class of 1967 moved to Racine after graduation and has lived their ever since.
“I’ve been away since I was seventeen” she says.

“I live in Wisconsin right now so every two or three years I’ll come to the reunion and see people I didn’t see before and everybody just have a good time.”

Next year, Anita Prather of the class of 1966 will celebrate at her fiftieth class reunion. She wants the students of today to understand the reality of her time.

“I want them to know that their mothers and fathers did go through a lot of hardship to bring them as far as they are. They don’t really understand when we talk about black history. They don’t know about black history,” Prather explains.

These graduates want to make sure that B.F. Ford school will never be forgotten.