By ANA RISANO
Insider Staff Writer
A white clapboard school with four classrooms and a wood-burning pot-bellied stove used to sit off N.C. 211, where West End Elementary school now resides.
Vineland was an all-Black school for children in West End, Eagle Springs and Jackson Springs, offering first through eighth grade.
The original school was torn down in 1957 and replaced by a modern brick structure, but it kept its name until the integration of the Moore County schools in 1969. Then, its name was all but forgotten — except by those who attended the school.
“I wish so much that they didn’t change the name,” Diane McRae, a former student, said. “It was an insult to me, being Black, that they changed the name. That is the only Black history we have in this community.”
The story of Vineland resurfaced when Debra Gray, pastor of Love Grove AME Zion church in West End, learned about it while researching her church community for a school project at Duke University.
“This is something that should be brought back,” Gray said.
But she’s had little luck researching Vineland, with few published records kept about the school.
Church neighbor and lifelong West End resident James Gillespie had the same experience when trying to find a picture of the old school. He was among the last graduating eighth-grade students to attend the original school.
“No one knew about what we went through,” Gillispie said, so he built a replica from memory in the early 2010s.
He’s held onto the model, keeping it safe in a trailer outside his home alongside other carpentry projects. After lending it to Gray, the portable wooden structure sparked the memories of other former students.
Esther McNeil and Doris Siler, each in their 90s, attended Vineland in the 1940s. McNeil, who graduated eighth grade in 1947, recalled little details about the place, from how the school operated to the single bus that picked students up.
With only four classrooms, the grades were grouped in twos: first and second, third and fourth, five and sixth and seventh and eighth grades each shared one room and teacher. The principal taught the seventh and eighth graders.
The bus had three long benches for students, with backless middle seats. McNeil said she was often pushed into one of those seats and had to hold on tight as the driver maneuvered the rural roads.
Other details of the school day included a cowbell used to signal the day’s opening, lunch hour and closing. With no lunchroom, students sat on the ground or ate lunch standing up.
And with no indoor plumbing, the school had an outhouse and outside water pump. Before school or during lunch, the kids played marbles or jumped rope.
Each woman fondly recalled their elementary school teachers, rattling off several common surnames for the area, including McKeithen, Smith, Jackson and Gordon.
They also remembered needing to take good care of their books because the school was not well-funded and could not afford new ones. The books they had came from the white schools in the area. McNeil said she would cover her books with brown paper bags to help protect them.
After McNeil and Siler graduated, an inventory of the county’s schools in 1954 noted Vineland as crowded and a potential fire hazard, according to an article in The Pilot from February 1954. A year later, another article said the school needed immediate attention.
By January 1957, The Pilot published that a new Vineland was under construction. This building was located on the same lot of N.C. 211. The current school consists of a later expansion.
The same year the new Vineland opened its doors, Siler worked as the cafeteria manager and bus driver.
“I cooked from scratch, and the children would be knocking on the door,” Siler said with a laugh.
Her daughter, Betty Siler, attended the new Vineland until graduating eighth grade in 1966 and attending West End High School — a formerly white school that integrated in 1966 when Pinckney High School in Carthage closed.
She also had fond memories of Vineland and was unhappy when she had to go to West End High School. She preferred Pinckney High School, describing it as a more rigorous education for students wanting to go to college.
“A lot of the Black kids who went to West End (High School) were not happy about it,” Siler said.
The West End High School later closed with the opening of Pinecrest High School that fall, consolidating three white and three black high schools in Southern Pines, Pinehurst, Aberdeen and West End. She finished her senior year there.
McRae, who started sixth grade in 1969, said her fondest memories from Vineland were at its May Day events, where the entire school gathered to celebrate the season. The students would sing, wrap the Maypole with colored ribbons, and participate in sack races and kickball.
“That school meant a lot to me,” McRae said. “We felt at home, and it was family because you knew that everybody meant something to everybody. There was no big divide within the youth.
“We all knew what it was to play together, to get along together. We might not agree on everything, but it didn’t separate us. We were still unified as Black people in this community.”
When McRae left Vineland for Pinecrest, she said the quality of her education changed.
“We did not get the love, the attention, that we had at Vineland,” she said.
Although the name would take years to fade, the newly integrated school system decided to rename its assets in 1969. Vineland became West End Elementary School.
In March 1969, an article in The Pilot stated, “Names of schools now operating in Area III of the county system will be changed to designate their changed uses in the coming school year, but this will be a temporary measure, and the advisory councils will be invited to recommend ‘distinctive’ names for them.”
A more distinctive name was never chosen for the school.
Betty Siler said she remembers the name changing but that not many community members sought to keep the name Vineland. She said her brother tried to attend school meetings but was a lone voice in the fight.
McRae, who moved away and returned in 2010, said she was heartbroken to learn that Vineland was nearly forgotten.
“My heart dropped,” she said. “It’s so emotional. It hurts that they think less of us. They didn’t think about our feelings, about the history that we have that we can’t even tell our children about. We can’t even take them to the history and walk them through it. This is where we first began.”
The woman agreed that they would like to see a monument or plaque marking the site of Vineland and sharing its history.
Contact Ana Risano at (910) 585-6396 or ana@thepilot.com.
