Thread by @__treyslay

You mean the middle school that served inner-city Huntsville that was closed. And the low-income housing around is about to be demolished for green space.. That school.!? This is what gentrification looks like.

https://twitter.com/thisisalabama/status/1212539001292259328

So let me paint this picture for y’all real quick

PSA
This is mostly oral history with some citations. I live 25 minutes away and I know quite a few people that went to Butler and live in the area. I could probably find all of the information to cite... buttttt.!

So the school in question is Roy L. Stone Middle School which was the earlier site for S.R. Butler High School. Now growing up I always thought Butler and Stone were all black schools through its history but they were not .

I joined a group and was shocked to the core to see the green and gold of Butler Rebels(Rebels definitely should have given it away) on non black people. This was the first instance of white flight I ever saw and will be discussed a little later.

Shookington

Growing up I remember Butler due to it being the biggest challenge to Decatur Girls Basketball getting state titles. It would pretty much be the biggest game in the state tournament no matter where they met up. So this is what I saw

The first pic my cousin is #21

Go Pooh.!!!

Anyway.!!!! Back to the story. These schools we built to suit Huntsvilles Boom in the 40-60’s when Redstone Arsenal and NASA began to drive the Huntsville Economy. I didn’t put it all together until a few years ago because nobody’s really talks about this stuff.

Like I said I know people that went to Butler and on separate occasions the same story was told about them coming here due to there parents working on the Arsenal and they both played ball at Butler.

[Insert Picture of Butler Girls Basketball Team on the Wheaties box]
*Sorry

Now that doesn’t make the incidents salacious until you go back and see how things changed. And integration wouldn’t have changed the demographics that drastically. Until you start putting peices together.

Well peices started falling once I did the research. Now the school has ease of access to the arsenal and was moved IMO for the ease right before/during the boom
[Exhibit A]

And sure enough I was right. Throughout my journeys through history I found out public housing started as a way to help wartime efforts in America before they were used to rob black people of generational wealth.

But I digress
[Exhibit B]

So the housing projects that I once played in weren’t built for us we were just pushed into them. Which is pretty much the entire story of housing projects.

Now Huntsville thought it was slick and at the time integration was king.

Hey Bull😒😒

My God Father always would tell the story of how Bull Conner came to his school and said Segregation today Segregation Tomorrow Yadda Yadda Yadda

But God saw fit.

Now this is Alabama and even though Brown v Board was in 54 we were still segregated until 69. And till this day in certain areas. Hence the state still being under Unitary Status

My granny’s graduating class

Now with integration of housing and schools you have the perfect recipe for declining property values, White flight and schools being underfunded.

Now when deseg happened all the black schools closed because separate but equal was never the plan and they didn’t want to give the funds or potentially have non blacks going to formerly predominantly black schools with black teachers

Fast forward. Even thought 2 years before butler closed the test scores were on the rise it wasn’t enough to keep the plans ahead from stopping.

Or the area being gentrified Mason Court and Butler Terrace were feeders to the schools. Take the schools first then take the community

The schools are now gentrication headquarters for plans to “redevelop” a community

Butler High School-a church
Stone Middle School- a play place for the affluent

I’m out of space to tweet

And please don’t tell me the school was closed for x amount of years. It was underfunded for x amount of years before it closed. Students without books who had to copy material from the board. Who wants to learn like that

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