PANEL TO DISCUSS SEGREGATED EDUCATION;
INCLUDES CAPE MAY HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 1929 MEMBERS

In recognition of Black History Month, the Center for Community Arts (CCA) Community History Program and the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts (MAC) will present a panel discussion of their joint exhibit, “A Feeling of Community: Segregation and Education on Cape Island, 1860-1954,” at the Carriage House Gallery, Emlen Physick Estate, 1048 Washington Street, in Cape May. The discussion, on Thursday, February 23, 2006, is at the Gallery at 7:00 p.m., free and open to the public.

Panelists will include Cordelia Howard Bounds and Janet Eldredge, Cape May High School Class of 1929, and Emily Dempsey and Frank Simonsen, who attended elementary school on Cape Island in the late 1940’s, when Cape Island, like all of New Jersey, underwent the transition from segregated to integrated public education. Bounds and Eldredge both went on to careers as teachers, and Bounds was a teacher in Cape May’s Franklin Street School while it was a segregated elementary school. The discussion will be moderated by CCA Board Chair and Cape May County NAACP Woman of the Year, Shirley “Becki” Wilson.

The exhibit contains artifacts, photographs and excerpts from oral histories gathered by CCA’s Community History Program over the last ten years. It tells part of the story of education on Cape Island between the establishment of public school in 1860 and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education that ended legalized school segregation throughout the nation. New Jersey’s State Constitution outlawed segregation in 1947.

CCA and MAC receive operating support from the New Jersey Historical Commission, and this exhibit is supported by Sturdy Bank. CCA and MAC also receive support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and many generous businesses and individuals.

For gallery hours and further information, please see www.centerforcommunityarts.org, http://www.capemaymac.org/, or call 884-7525 or 884-5404.


ORAL HISTORY—CCA Community History Program volunteers Yvonne Wright-Gary (left) and Emily Dempsey (right) interviewed M. Cordelia Howard Bounds (center) in her Moorestown home this fall for the current exhibit at MAC’s Carriage House Gallery, “A Feeling of Community: Segregation and Education on Cape Island.” Bounds, a native of West Cape May who attended Cape May High School and went on to teach at the Franklin Street School, and Dempsey, who attended the segregated Franklin Street School, will be part of a panel discussing the exhibit on Thursday, February 23, at 7:00 p.m. at the Carriage House Gallery at MAC. (Photo: Steve Bacher)