Alumni celebrates milestone for local high school
JACKSON, Tenn. –One group of alumni celebrate 100 years of the founding of one Jackson high school.
The Merry High National Alumni Association is celebrating the 100 year anniversary of the founding of Merry High School. Austin Raymond Merry was the first black educator and principal in the Jackson school system.
“We’re here celebrating Merry High, which South Jackson School for Colored culminated in Merry High, which in 1970 when the integration of Jackson High and Merry High became Jackson Central Merry,” said Lynn Coleman, great granddaughter of Austin Raymond Merry.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the ruling of Brown v Board which made state-sanctioned segregation of public schools a violation and ruled it unconstitutional.
Merry gave black students the opportunity to excel in their education.
“Community was everything for Austin. Austin was a community person, so when we look around and we see the progression of this city, it is because of the strive that Merry High graduates have made,”said Thembekila Crystal Coleman Smart, great granddaughter of Austin Raymond Merry.
It wasn’t until the 1960’s, when the City of Jackson started seeing integration. Brenda Moses was the first student to integrate Jackson High school. She wanted to attend Merry High, but due to the lack of a foreign language…
“If they had equal education and if Latin had still been at Merry High, as it was for my mother when she graduated in 1931, nobody would have ever heard of Brenda Moses, cause there would’ve been no need for a lawsuit to be filed in federal court for me to get in Jackson High,” said Brenda Monroe Moses, First black student at Jackson High School.
Moses was the only black student in a school of 800. It wasn’t until 1964, when she became the first black graduate of Jackson High School. In 1970 both Merry and Jackson High were forced to integrate.
“The larger community just wanted to call it Central at Jackson, like there was Central at Alamo, but the community stood up and I know the Merry’s were at the forefront of leading that fight, that we have to have the name Merry in this school and that’s why it ended up being Jackson Central Merry High School,” Moses said.
The celebration continued as alumni took a tour of JCM and had a reunion banquet at the Carl Perkins Civic Center.
The banquet for the reunion starts tonight at 7 p.m. downtown also at the civic center.
