Editor’s note: This was originally printed as an afterword in the final Dollarway High School yearbook printed in 2023. Dollarway and Pine Bluff high schools merged after the 2022-23 school year, two years after the Dollarway School District was annexed into the Pine Bluff School District.
F riday evening in 2000, the opening day, the graduating Class of 1975 gathered at the Holiday Inn Civic Center for our 25th Class Reunion in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It was a bittersweet reunion. However, we did not represent all 140-plus of us (those we lost, those who did not graduate that year and even those who could not earn their high school diplomas).
Our journey began with many of our African American classmates in first grade and many of our white classmates during the turbulence of school desegregation in 1969 — we were the first class to be fully integrated into Townsend Park and Dollarway schools. Some memories remain very salient in my mind, whereas others dimmed. Nonetheless, there we were clustered and stuffed in one of our rooms, laughing, hugging, joking, praying, toasting and getting reacquainted.
Our class remembered and celebrated every one of us that weekend. Yes, we were all there, and the reunion was indeed bittersweet. I vividly remember the hugs, snuggling, laughter, jolting and shooting the breeze (jonning) and the reminiscing of so many wonderful fun memories of our 17- and 18-year-old-selves who had already declared themselves adults, bubbling over with excitement, dreams (and fear) of starting the next chapters of our lives. Of course, there were a few mumbles and grumbles of past hurts, open wounds, couched in grudges of past kid fallout stuff from our earlier high school years. But even those could not hold a candle to the love that poured from our reunion, swamping down and healing hurt feelings and infiltrating the building with so much love. I remember feeling like we were all siblings with a history of fights and deep love and who still loved each other unconditionally.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
I was asked 10 years later, in 2010, to write the afterword to the book, “Remembrances in Black: Personal Perspectives of the African American Experience at the University of Ark., 1940s-2000s,” a historical monograph about desegregation at the University of Arkansas. I titled the afterword for the book “Write This Down” because in Exodus 17, following a major victory, God instructed Moses to record the momentous events that have occurred as testimonials and evidence of God’s grace and goodness for his people for future generations to know. Rarely is the gift in what we write down for ourselves, but rather what we write down for others.
I was so honored then, as I am now, to be asked to write a brief historical monograph as an afterword for the Class of 1975’s desegregation of the Dollarway School District. This dedication is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For us, the Class of 1975, it is an opportunity to celebrate our beloved high school! For us, it is not just the gift in what we write down for ourselves but what we write down for others.
We are all grown up and can now reflect on Dollarway and Townsend Park. We can now thank our teachers and principals who stood at the doors of the building and the ground gates, keeping watch, guarding and protecting our physical bodies and our young souls and spirits. Likewise, we now understand Poet Jorge Luis Borges’ words in his poem titled, “You Learn” (from “The Garden of Forking Paths,” 1962).
He wrote: “after a while you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes ahead, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child /And you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans, and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.”
Closing the doors of our beloved building is indeed a sad and joyous occasion. Sad because our school and building have shut down, and joyful because of the precious memories of our friends and family that have passed through the doors of Dollarway. We ended our 25th class reunion, vowing to return in 2025 for our Golden 50th anniversary.
Borges ends his poem with the words:
“And you learn that you really can endure. / You really are strong; you really do have worth. / And you learn, and you learn / With every goodbye you learn.”
Dollarway closed its doors two years before our 50th anniversary. But write this down: We will be back in 2025 with our remembrance. May we, and the graduating classes that have come after us, always hear the battle cry song in our hearts and souls:
“We are Big, B.I.G./ We are Bad, B.A.D, / and We are Boss, B.O.S.S. — Boss.”
Live on Mighty Cardinals and Mighty Eagles!!
Aretha Faye Marbley, Ph.D., is professor and director of Clinical Mental Health Counseling in Counselor Education and AACTE Holmes Scholar coordinator in the College of Education at Texas Tech University.