OLD JEFFERSON SCHOOL PLAYED ROLE IN CITY'S RACIAL HISTORY

Built in 1905 at a cost of $10,000, the old Jefferson School at the southeast corner of Jefferson and Ellis streets sits vacant now. The "For Sale" sign in the front yard for the past two months has brought a few calls but no serious inquiries.

The bell tower and people's memories are all that remain of the school's place in the city's racial history.

In 1953, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in the public schools, the building housed the city's black elementary students after their school was burned down.

The John S. Cobb School at 731 Merriwether was destroyed by fire on March 17, 1953. The blaze was blamed on a "firebug," but no one was ever apprehended or charged.

The gymnasium was not harmed. For the next year, black high school students were educated in the Cobb gymnasium. White elementary students were moved from the old Jefferson School to May Greene, and black elementary students were moved into the old Jefferson School.

The Cape Girardeau public schools were integrated in the fall of 1954, the year the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Old Jefferson School was sold after the new one was built on Minnesota Street in 1957. Auto Tire & Parts now uses the old Cobb School gymnasium.

Helen Sterling, who graduated from the John S. Cobb School a year before it burned, said the Cape schools abandoned the Cobb teachers.

"The school system did not hire any of our teachers," she said, "and they were fine teachers."

The schools did hire the principal, Marvin Gravette, but not in a teaching capacity, she said. "He would pick up mail at the post office. We called him `an errand boy.'"

The owner of the old school building, Gary Heuer, said the building was divided into apartments long ago. During one period it was the Carpenters Union Hall.

He acquired the building in 1976 and used it for storage. Now empty, the building has a selling price of $55,000.

Although the bell tower remains, most signs that the two-story building was once a school have vanished. Drop ceilings, interior walls and paneling disguise what used to be a four-room schoolhouse.

"It used to have a chalkboard in the interior," Heurer said, "but all that's been removed now."