Closure of Dunbar School in Lawton stirs deep emotions

Students weren’t the only ones traumatized by the closure of Dunbar School.

Ricky B. Williams remembers that older people in his neighborhood didn’t take it well when Lawton Public Schools decided to close the school in 1974, ending classes in a building that had been educating youth in the predominantly African-American neighborhood since 1939.

“We marched, from Dunbar to the Board of Education. And, we set up there,” he said, remembering that marchers set up on the Board of Education building’s lawn for two weeks, holding signs as they tried to convince district officials to change their minds.

Ricky was part of that protest, even though he was a just junior high freshman at the time.

“You were too focused on school,” Ricky told his sister Sherene L. Williams, then a fourth-grader at Dunbar who would have to transfer to another school to finish her elementary years.

Ricky received his mother’s permission to participate, saying he felt strongly that he needed to be part of the protest.

“I was 14 years old at the time,” he said, remembering an effort led by older adults who were serious enough to stay day and night, sleeping outside the Board of Education’s building to keep the pressure on to prevent closure.

It didn’t work.

“It was a court ruling. We had to move on,” Ricky said, of the court-ordered desegregation efforts. “The community did not want to close.”

Closure changed life for students and the community.

Dunbar students were assigned to other elementary schools, and the street you lived on determined where you would go, the siblings said of an effort calculated to keep student populations equal at other schools.

“I lived on Oklahoma Street, so I was transferred to Crosby Park Elementary School, and it was an open space school,” Sherene said.

A gregarious child, Sherene fit into her new school easily, liked her experience there and made friends that are in her life today. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she heard from other Dunbar students who didn’t have the same experiences, instead remembering problems with other students because of their race.

“I did not have that,” she said.

Ricky said he remembers the change the closure had on the tight-knit neighborhood. Where once there was commonality — everyone up to grade six went to the same school — students now attended school based on their street address. That meant childhood friends weren’t necessarily classmates any more.

“It divided friends up,” he said, explaining few students went to their new schools with fellow Dunbar students and even if you were in the same school, you weren’t necessarily in the same class. “They were scattered.”

The Williams siblings said speculation remains about why Dunbar School was closed while Douglass School, another African-American school, was not.

“Support,” said Ricky, explaining Douglass had prominent supporters that Dunbar did not, and that’s why Douglass continued as a school within Lawton Public Schools while Dunbar was used as a district storage area for years before it was sold.

Closure wasn’t an easy process for anyone.

Sherene said she looks back on that time and realizes just how hard adults — such as the late Councilman Stanley Haywood, a school counselor — tried to help students adjust to their new reality.

“That hit me at the City Council meeting,” she said, of the vote she had to cast as the Ward 7 councilwoman to demolish the school.

Lawton Public Schools ultimately sold the building to private entities, which have tried over the years to covert the school into a community center.

The last serious attempt began as a project in the 1990s, Ricky said. While new windows were installed, roofing repaired and interior repair plans made, the effort was unsuccessful and support waned. The siblings said they think there simply wasn’t enough volunteer labor to keep the effort moving forward.