History of Carver Elementary School

For years Carver has been remembered for it’s segregated past. Originally the area of what is remembered as Carver was owned by Royal Oak Township which covered modern day sections of Hazel Park, Ferndale, Oak Park, Madison Heights, Pleasant Ridge, Huntington Woods, Royal Oak, Berkley, and Clawson, and was much larger version of Royal Oak Township then is known remembered today. At the time the Clinton School District was the district for Royal Oak Township, and was one entity, consisting of two schools. In the north Clinton, and Wineman in the south of the city. In 1945 the Federal Government opened Oakdale Gardens in the southern part of the Township. This project was built for the growing population of Black production workers of WWII. In response to the growing black population the whites in the Township petitioned to split the school district in two, with the southern end of the city serving the blacks and the northern section serving the whites. The petitioned succeeded and in the latter half of 1945 the district was split in two. The northern half kept the same name as the Clinton, while the southern “new” district took on the name “George Washington Carver School District”. The name stemmed from George Washington Carver a agricultural scientist that became the first African American to attend and earn a Bachelor of Science degree at Iowa State Agricultural College (Known today as Iowa State) in 1894. He developed many staples of modern day farming and helped to promote self sufficient farming practices and helped curb cotton reliance in the south. Carver was born into Slavery however never worked as a slave in a typical sense as he was born in 1864, however his caregivers were his former slave owners, when he was between 10 and 12 years of age he pressured a education in a nearby black school. His studies lead him to Iowa State as mentioned. While Carver wasn’t a bad person to name the district after, it could be argued that the name for the district was chosen under racist pretense. The Wineman school that stood in the south was quickly replaced with the construction of the modern day Carver Elementary School in 1944. Carver would open in 1945. The tax base of new district was so poor it was unable to afford a high school program. The government refused to fund or accept similar matters across the US in other segregated communities stating “separate but equal”. While early on Carver students could attend High School via an agreement with DPS that allowed Carver students to attend Northern High School, a segregated black school nearby to the New Center neighborhood of Detroit, via a bussing network established between the two districts, and while basic funding was given to Carver with a addition in 1952, corruption had gotten the better of the Carver district. Throughout the 1950s Carver had many notable incidents happen causing damages to school property, financial fraud, and in many cases the school closing on multiple occasions for days at a time. While the white based Clinton district (which had recently changed its name to Oak Park School District with the establishment of the City of Oak Park), continued to grow and built built their own high school in 1953, known as Oak Park High School. By the end of the 50s Detroit Public Schools stopped accepting Carver students, as the the district owed Detroit Public Schools, over 1.5 million in today’s money in tuition cost for Carver students. Another reason it was canceled was the influx of students at Detroit Public Schools as a whole leading to Carver students without a high school education. While a high school classroom was set up inside Carver it was a very stubborn way of keeping segregation alive in the district. In 1960 the story of the Carver district received national attention after a Time magazine article exposed the dark truth of the matter. Shortly after the article was published the governor of Michigan Mennen Williams mandated Oak Park to consolidate the 2 districts into one. Largely due to the fact that the Carver district didn’t have a dedicated high school and no other high school programs from surrounding suburbs volunteered for students at Carver to enroll. While originally Oak Park MI wasn’t even a city when the Carver district was created instead being owned by Royal Oak Township, the white Clinton school district that Oak Park annexed from Royal Oak Township meant it had responsibility over the control of Carver as well. In 1960 after the consolidation the district was one district again and students were no longer segregated from attending Oak Park High School. Ending the 15 year segregation attempt from white residents. However in the years following, a large twist and turnaround of the district occurred in a rare case throughout the 60s into the 70s, Oak Park was one of the only suburban districts to integrate races, however with notable exceptions with students largely being separated both physically and socially. It is important to note it was still perfectly legal into the 1970s for school districts to follow the “separate but equal” policy. Shortly after students of the original Carver district were again reassigned if they lived east of Wyoming Ave, into Ferndale Public Schools. However like Oak Park, the students were illegally segregated. Into the early and mid 1970s, Plaintiffs in the protracted litigation to integrate the public schools of Detroit presented considerable evidence about segregation in Royal Oak Township years prior. They argued that it showed that the city’s school aided segregation in the metropolitan area and that the State of Michigan had taken steps to maximize the segregation of students.  Plaintiffs also pointed to Royal Oak Township’s arrangement with Detroit Public School as an example of  government support of cross district busing across districts to maintain segregation. When the Detroit school integration case went before the Supreme Courts, one of the state’s strongest arguments was that cross district bussing was illegal. In 1970 Carver Elementary was cut in half as a school when a renovation occurred a small section of classrooms was cut out leaving the northern half of Carver vacant, later being given to Royal Oak Township to turn the space into a rec center in 1972. The remaining southern section remained in use as Carver Elementary until 1983 when it was closed. For many years, the southern section was owned by Kingswood Hospital. Before becoming Academy of Oak Park from 2000 to 2010. The Rec Center remained open until around 2019. Today Carver Elementary remains the only school built for the George Washington Carver School District, and the only remaining piece of the district. Most of the remaining land that makes up Royal Oak Township almost perfectly surrounds what was once the Carver district and community, and while almost all the houses that made up the original projects of the 40s have been replaced or demolished, the land borders remain mostly the same due to the suburbs that annexed all the land of the original Royal Oak Township unwilling to come to terms with annexation of a black enclave. Leaving a very small pocket of land to remember for its segregated past.