Historic Lithonia Now: Reimagining Bruce Street School
Downtown Lithonia, Georgia, late spring, midweek and around noon had the type of tranquility that suggested a cinematic small town. A few parallel-parked cars lined curbs. An older gentleman sat at a table shaded by an umbrella. It wasn’t clear which store the table belonged to.
I was there on Main Street to grab lunch. I’d ordered a veggie burger for my kid and a spicy Thai kale wrap for myself from Green Love Kitchen. It had been two years since I last visited the restaurant. The last time I called, pre-pandemic, they’d been closed. In fact, a movie had been filming in the area and the restaurant appeared in a few scenes: Lithonia immortalized once more.
If this had been the 50s and 60s, Southeast Federal would’ve occupied Green Love Kitchen’s suite, and a drug store advertising ice cream would’ve sat nextdoor to it, where a book store sat today. The same building stood, preserved and still in use. And there is hope in the community for another building over on Bruce Street with its own rich history. The Bruce Street building hasn’t fared as well as the one on Main Street with the passage of time, but it was one that united the community with the common goal of educating Black youth. It was a school. Today, its ruins unite the community with a different goal.
The man seated at the table nodded as I walked past with my son. Classic Outkast floated on the still air, “We caught the 86 Lithonia headed to Decatur.”
Before picking up the lunch order, I pushed open the door to a barbershop, the source of the music. Outdoor speakers were mounted by the doors near an outdoor TV that played the accompanying music videos. I wanted to find out if they had anyone who could braid short hair. Addendum: short hair for a tender-headed, active child. There was someone, but they weren’t in. I got a name and number from the man cutting hair in the first chair; he introduced himself as Doug. We moseyed on.
The sidewalks invited a slow stroll. It was in the low foot traffic and those nods of greeting after intentionally catching another person’s eye for the sole purpose of nodding that greeting just to signal, “I see you, fam.” It was an easy feeling. A feeling of community, even among and with those we didn’t know. My son began swinging my arm. Down Wiggins Street — glancing to the right we could see straight down — the grey, granite front of the Woman’s Club was visible, the street free of cars.
Back on April 24, cars had lined Wiggins, and the lot closest to the club held its share of vehicles, too. The community engagement meetings of Shaping the Future of Bruce Street School were all well-attended. The fourth meeting, held on that day, was no exception.
Dating back to the 1930s with the first high school class matriculating in 1943, Bruce Street School was the first Black public school in Dekalb County. After closing in the late 1960s, the school deteriorated and fell to ruins. Talks of salvaging something of the site began in 2003. Now in 2022, plans are underway.
I attended that April 24 meeting, squeaking in just in time for the start. I was invited to help myself to lunch and coffee. The food was arranged in the adjoining kitchen. I decided to wait.
The Woman’s Club had an understated elegance and a historical feel. Wooden appointments could be seen from the front room adorning antique bookshelves in adjacent rooms. The front room itself sat in a vague natural light. Folding chairs traversed the hardwoods in rows, separated for a center aisle for the projector in back to have a clear shot to the screen.
Two representatives from the Martin Rickles Studio stood ready on either side of the screen. But before they could begin, someone stood to introduce and thank them. It was such a warm, lengthy, praise-laden welcome that for a moment I wondered if there were people in the room to convince. But when I glanced around for signs of discontent, there was not a single person restless.
The woman who’d spoken was executive director of Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance, Revonda Cosby. After the meeting, I’d find myself sitting outside with her on the stone wall beside the steps outside the door and just around the corner from the interpretive garden where leaders from the community, including Bruce Street School principal C. E. Flagg are commemorated. By then I’d have a box lunch and a few sodas in a bag to take with me.
Three meticulously detailed and distinct concepts were introduced, complete with mock-ups of interior and exterior views. Proposals for space usage included a memory garden, classroom areas, seating areas with exhibitions of artifacts and historical information, and an amphitheater.
A gentleman on the front right row asked a question about the timeline to completion, adding a quip about mortality. About not having a lot of time left to wait. He wanted the chance to enjoy the new site for himself. I’d find out later that he was a former Bruce Street student.
“You got a piggy bank, Leo?” a man with longish grey hair teased mildy. Everyone seemed to know both men and chuckled along.
The amphitheater, part of concept three, was popular. Kazemde Ajamu, owner of Black Dot Cultural Center Bookstore & Coffee Bar on Main Street, remembered me when I approached to ask his thoughts on the designs. His is the bookstore next to Green Love Café. Ajamu favored the amphitheater concept because of its potential not only for events and gatherings, but for holding classes and fundraising events. After our chat, Ajamu quickly fell into conversation with an Arabia Mountain Heritage Area member on a particular aspect of the amphitheater.
Kelly Jordan, founder and board member of Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance approached me. He spoke in a quiet, sincere, calm voice and wore his grey hair longish. Jordan was the one who’d joked with Leo Morton about piggy banks. Jordan was pleased with the concepts and the turnout. “It’s sad that ruins are all that’s left, but that makes it more imperative that the ruins are preserved in a way that honors history,” he said. He added that it’s important to him to preserve stories of all people and places “not just the white history,” and correct injustices. Jordan said diversity on his team is important. He then pointed out Cosby as one of his initial recruits.
The first thing I asked about when I got a moment with Cosby was her profound enthusiasm for Martin Rickles Studio. The design team selection process had been highly competitive and then whittled down to three finalists. The one thing Cosby said she hadn’t wanted was “business as usual” when it came to an African American community reviving a historical site.
“They have indoctrinated themselves,” Cosby said of the Studio. “They have visited community members. They have taken personal tours, spent time on the site. They have come up with ways to capture oral history. They have gone back and really studied, and not just given me cookie-cutter design.” Authenticity is important to Cosby on this project, and sincerity flowed through her deliberate manner of speaking each point. “That meant something to me. [For them] to hear the people whose site this really is and not come with some preconceived notion of what this should look like.”
Collection of verbal accounts has been integral as there aren’t a lot of records on Bruce Street School. The first community engagement meeting had over 40 seniors attend and stay the entire 3 hours. For several, it had been their first time on the school’s site since graduating. Cosby said anecdotally, “Every student that came back to that school remembered the cafeteria lady. How she looked. How she conducted herself. Who she was in the neighborhood. Leo said, when she would come upstairs to ask for volunteers, it was as if the president had walked into the building.”
By this time, Morton had already gone past us down the granite steps, climbed into a black truck, and waved us farewell.
Another former student, Cosby said, had gone on to become the food service manager for all of Dekalb County as a result of the cafeteria lady’s influence.
“The people in education, they leave lasting ripples. I still remember my third-grade teacher and the relationships that I had at my school. I had role models in my community who look like me, from my Sunday school to my [elementary] school, and it made a difference.”
There was a time Lithonia was one of the most bustling cities for people of color. A few miles from the Woman’s Club sits the old site for the Black Country Club and the Lithonia Speedway, the dirt race track for one of the segregated racing leagues in the South. Lithonia Speedway was also known for first-class performers like Little Richard and BB King, though the main event was still the races.
Cosby said, “One of our board members said she snuck to her first concert at the age of 12 with her arm broke to see James Brown at the Lithonia Motor Speedway. This other gentleman said all you needed was a starched pair of coveralls and you could get in.”
Former City of Lithonia Mayor, Dr. Deborah A. Jackson, recalled that Bruce Street School was also a gathering place for the community. “Because of segregation, there was a whole social aspect to the activities. It provided a strong sense of support for young people who were growing up in the area at the time. There were community events. People attended the different games.” An all-Black baseball team played on a field across from the school. Some of the structures remain today, like part of the catcher’s cage and the pavilion where people would gather.
History compilation for Bruce Street School has been grassroots, partly dependent on getting the word out, having people take interest and offering what they have in the way of yearbooks, pictures, and giving audio/video interviews. Not only is official history scarce, the majority of the building itself is no more. In fact, that’s a motivating factor in stepping in now to save, repurpose, and utilize the ruins. Like a spirit, parts of the structure are completely broken down but remain on site. These fragments, pieces, and bits are referred to as “differently incarnated forms.”
Participants in previous meetings pinpointed specific areas of the site that interested them. The former layout has been redrawn as best as possible with recollection, historical research, and an analysis of the site’s built and landscape elements. The remains are enough material to learn from. Onsite soil and vegetation have been studied, and well as hydrology. It’s been determined that views have been preserved though, naturally, a lot of work has happened around the building since it was a school. From the inside of the site, mostly trees and sky are visible and not obstructed by the decades worth of changes surrounding it.
The next phase will be to gather feedback from attendees, both in-person and online, to find the most popular and agreed upon aspects of each concept. Concerns and suggestions will also be considered. The final design is likely to include elements from all three. The design reveal will occur at the Bruce Street School site on Juneteenth.
“From destruction to conceptual design. We were at the brink of no action being taken,” Cosby said. “Now we’ve made a change in the community, and we did it with a collaboration of people. It wasn’t just my organization. It was Dekalb County, it was Commissioner Mareda Davis Johnson, it was community development. It was other leaders who felt the same way. And the city of Lithonia.”
