'Save Our Smith': Community spearheads effort to protest moving E.E. Smith to Fort Liberty
E.E. Smith High School alumni and community members say they’re not OK with recommendations from Cumberland County Schools to move the historic high school away from the Murchison Road and Broadell neighborhood area.
More than half a dozen community members met Thursday night in the Ferguson building off Murchison Road to discuss a “Save Our Smith” initiative and what can be done before Cumberland County commissioners consider the school board’s recommendation to move the school, which is at 1800 Seabrook Road.
The CCS Board of Education voted 5-3 on Jan. 15 to recommend county commissioners approve building a new E.E. Smith High School at Stryker Golf Course, which abuts Fort Liberty at the end of Bragg Boulevard.
Board members Carrie Sutton and Judy Musgrave opposed the recommendation along with board President Deanna Jones.
Sutton told The Fayetteville Observer in August, that she didn't want the board making any recommendation about a new E.E. Smith site without hearing from community members.
Alumni say don't move E.E. Smith on federal land
During Thursday night’s meeting, Dr. Sharon McDonald-Evans, a 1984 E.E. Smith alum who is part of the National E.E. Smith Alumni Association, said most alumni are not against having a new facility and think a new school should have been built 50 years ago.
“Terry Sanford is just as old, but it’s not run down, because they kept it up,” McDonald-Evans said. “We have not had administrators that cared about keeping the building up.”
McDonald-Evans said that while her father and many other family members served in the military she is against the school being moved on post.
Speaking during a Feb. 15 media round table discussion, Lt. Gen. Christoper Donahue, senior commander of Fort Liberty and the 18th Airborne Corps, said anyone could have access to the school because its location would be outside the installation’s main gates.
More: 'It is my bloodline': E.E. Smith student body president weighs in on school's future
With no high school on post, E.E. Smith serves Fort Liberty’s high school students.
A Cumberland County Schools' spokeswoman told The Fayetteville Observer in November that 180 Fort Liberty students attend E.E. Smith High School.
At Thursday night’s meeting, McDonalds-Evans said Stryker Golf Course is still federal land, and she has concerns that if the county enters into a 50-year lease with the military for the land, the lease could get broken before 50 years are up.
“If the military still owns that land, they still control whatever happens to that building — 100%,” she said.
McDonald-Evans said the Department of Defense could close down access to the school, similar to a decision in the early 2000s that caused the entire post to have gates and require civilian visitors to check in before going on post.
“They’re getting what they want, and that’s the dismantling of E.E. Smith High School,” she said. “E.E. Smith is one of the few high schools remaining in the state of North Carolina that was historically Black, (and) still is historically Black.”
The school, originally opened in 1927 on the second floor of the Orange Street School, is named after Ezekiel Ezra Smith, an African American Fayetteville educator and statesman from the late 1800s.
The school moved to Campbell Avenue in 1929, Washington Avenue in 1941 and its current location in 1954.
McDonald-Evans' other concerns were how much gas would cost the school district to bus students to Fort Liberty, and she questioned which businesses near Stryker Golf Course would profit from the move.
“Who owns that property around Stryker?” she asked. "There’s something else to this. We just haven’t discovered it.“
Alum says removing school would kill neighborhood
LaVar Wright, a 1995 alum whose great-grandfather was one of the first E.E. Smith High School students, has had multiple other family members attend the school and is also part of the national alumni association.
Wright questioned what the effects would be if the school was moved away from the Broadell neighborhood.
“The neighborhood is exactly what it is — a gem of Murchison Road,” he said. “The school itself is the heartbeat, the pulse.”
Wright said if the school is pulled from Broadell, the neighborhood will die. He questioned whether the land the school is currently on would be sold cheaply and asked who would come in and “take over.”
More: 'E.E. Smith is in your heart': Alumni, students say legacy means more than school's location
“What about the kids in that neighborhood that don’t have anything now?” he asked. "You’ve left this community already with a gaping hole because you don’t give the funds and the upkeep to the school that’s necessary.”
Shelita Reid, a 2001 E.E. Smith graduate, agreed that the school needs to remain in the Broadell community.
“These kids need a sense of community ... We have such a big sense of pride here, and it just needs to stay,” Reid said.
Request for more options
Reid’s father, Harrie Reid, a 1974 E.E. Smith graduate and veteran of Fort Liberty’s 82nd Airborne Division, agreed that a new school should not be on post and wants to see more options for where it can be built.
“Get an engineer or somebody out here to make this stuff work and show an alternative," he said.
Another community member who attended Thursday night’s meeting and did not want to be identified because he previously worked for Cumberland County Schools challenged alumni to press the district about plans for the new school and land evaluations on other sites that have been considered.
“All the other high schools in this county are two stories,” he said. “So don’t tell me it can’t be done. Show me the proposal so I can evaluate.”
Wright said officials have told him the current school is landlocked and that Cumberland County is moving away from having multiple-level schools because of the need for elevators and concerns about safety issues if there were an active shooter situation.
The former employee said the reasons are excuses and that security locks with fobs that only district employees, law enforcement and fire have access to can be used.
“They (district and county officials) have their minds made up, and you guys have got to fight,” he said.
Save Our Smith
Kevin Brooks is not an E.E. Smith graduate, but has been a Fayetteville resident since 2004 and worked in the Murchison Road corridor for more than a decade.
Brooks is the founder of The Group Theory Inc. a local organization with an after-school program geared toward youth and education for underserved populations, that also has a community violence intervention program.
Thursday night’s meeting was held in The Group Theory’s offices.
Brooks also has children who attended or still attend E.E. Smith High School.
His son is a graduate, as are two daughters who were cheerleaders during their time at the school, and a third daughter is an E.E. Smith junior this year, he said.
Brooks said a new school is needed, and the community “deserves modernization, and it needs progression.”
“My challenge to you is how much do you believe in what it will take to keep your school here?” he asked.
Brooks said that based on the conversations he heard Thursday night, he foresees a “Save Our Smith” campaign.
The campaign will cost time and money, and he said he knows of a couple of people who are already prepared to donate $500.
Brooks said there may be costs for signs, T-shirts and for alumni to pay for an engineer to look at the current land where E.E. Smith High School sits for another opinion about whether it’s feasible to build a new high school there.
He asked who would be willing to be on the “Save Our Smith” committee and said that if alumni and community members grow tired they should get ready to send their kids to “the high school on Fort Liberty.”
“We need to be aware of it happening here, and this is the most prominent Black community in the city right now,” he said. “Well, who’s next?"
McDonald-Evans said more advocates are needed.
“We need to come up with a strategy that we need to do that needs to be effective, because we do care about kids, but more importantly we care about the community,” she said.
Call for action
McDonald-Evans and Wright said community members who do not want the school to be on Fort Liberty need to go to the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners meetings in March to speak out.
Wright said members of the community have always been told “can’t is not an option.”
“The city and county says, 'We can’t build up, and we can’t build in that location up,'” he said. “You won’t. You don’t want to.”
Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: E.E. Smith alumni oppose Fayetteville high school move to Fort Liberty
