9/13/2023 0 Comments Pender county schools timekeeper![]() But he added that things got better over the years - and he had the support of some of his former Annandale teachers who moved with him to Topsail. Hansley said he wished he’d spent more time learning than fighting. You just try and prepare yourself for what you’re going into - and that’s when the fights came in at,” said Hansley. We were going into something that we didn’t know what we were going into. “It was sort of disappointing and then it was sort of fearful. Hansley recalled when Annandale closed in the late 1960s - and he had to attend Topsail High School, previously an all-white school. And in May, when school was about to be dismissed, we would wrap the maypole, you know certain things we did that we didn't do when we went to an integrated school.” He said in an interview with WHQR that some of his favorite memories of the school were recess and “being able to go to the canteen outside of the school, they had a little white building and we would go to and get our Rock and Roll's and our milk. James Hansley, a retired truck driver, is one of the alumni leading the effort to preserve Annandale’s legacy. Remembering Annandale - and what came after Morrisey said she had pride riding the “big yellow limo” (the bus) to school - and experiencing, for the first time, access to indoor plumbing, hot meals in a cafeteria, and more than one educator. And just take it to heart, that we’re not trying to take anything from anybody,” said Morrisey. And I thought it was also nice to have a desk all to myself, a desk that hadn't been scribbled on – we thought that was so nice. “When I started there I was in fifth grade. And so I asked you to really look deep down in your hearts and see if there is any way that you can restore the school back to Annandale School,” said Lewis.Īlum Francis Hansley Morrisey also spoke at this meeting. And men look like my daddy or my brother. “I'm standing before you because this would mean so much to me before I leave this earth because at that school I realized there, I could really, really be something because I saw teachers dressed up – look like me. Along with the name change, everything about our history was discarded.”Īnnandale alum Pauline Moore Lewis spoke to the Pender County School Board at their November 9th, 2021, meeting about what the name change would mean to her. In Pender county and the surrounding areas, we have no childhood school history remaining. The letter states the renaming decision was “never discussed with the Black parents, the school administration or staff. ![]() In an effort to preserve Annandale's history, the group, ‘the Annandale alumni, former employees, and concerned citizens of Pender County', sent a formal letter to both the Pender County School Board and the superintendent in April 2021 asking for the name change. While Topsail Elementary has undergone renovations and additions, the original Annandale building is still a wing of the school. There were some interceding years where the school became a middle school - but in 2009, it officially re-opened as an elementary school. In 1990, the school became Topsail Elementary, which served K-5 students. Students who attended the Canetuck Rosenwald School in Pender County (Image taken in the mid-1940s.)īut in the late 1960s, Pender county started moving away from all-Black 'equalization' schools like Annandale in order to fully integrate schools.Īnnandale closed in 1968 and re-opened as Topsail Primary School.
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