The Neva Lomason Library is displaying a traveling exhibit, The Carver High Experience, until mid-April and students involved in after-school programs at Carrollton City Schools have the opportunity to visit. 

The exhibit covers the 14-year history of the George Washington Carver High School, a school in Carrollton that opened in the early 1950s for all black students in Carroll County who previously attended community and church schools during the time of segregation.

Carroll County Training School was established in 1932, for black students in grades one through seven. In 1954, the Alabama Street Elementary School opened for grades one through seven and Carver High School opened for grades eight through twelve.

During the exhibit, students become familiar with the faces of Carver High’s first principal, Mr. L.S. Molette, last principal, Mr. Charles E. Wilson, and their staff and students displayed in younger years as prom queens, football players, members of marching bands and an assortment of student clubs and organizations. 

The Carver High Experience exhibit was established in 2011 by The Carver High Museum & Archives of West Georgia, Inc. (CHMA) by invitation of the University of West Georgia’s Center for Diversity and Inclusion. CHMA was formed in 2005 by Carver High alumni to preserve the history and legacy of the county’s historic black schools.

Carrollton High School students visited last week where CHMA’s founder, Carolyn Gray, walked them through the exhibit. 

“I wanted to preserve the local history and help educate people in the community about Carver High’s story,” she said while giving students an introduction to the exhibit. 

George Washington Carver High School served black high school students of Carroll County from the fall of 1954 through the spring of 1969 when segregation officially ended in Georgia. The last class graduated in May of 1968; however, the school continued through the tenth grade until the spring of 1969.

The school building remains at Alabama and Childs Streets in Carrollton. With desegregation, it became Alabama Street School, one of the city’s three elementary schools at the time, before all were consolidated into Carrollton Elementary School in the early 1990s.