D. F. Douglass High School - Macon County Georgia
by Mark Tisdale
Title
D. F. Douglass High School - Macon County Georgia
Artist
Mark Tisdale
Medium
Mixed Media - Watercolor - Acrylic - Digital
Description
D. F. Douglass High School in Montezuma, Georgia, opened its doors to the African American community of the area in 1958. It remained an all black school even after the other schools in the county were desegregated. I am told that when it closed its doors in 1998, it was the last all black school in Georgia.
Aside from living in Montezuma the bulk of my life, my desire to capture Douglass High as it was is that my late father, Charlie Tisdale, taught and coached there for a number of years throughout most of the 1970's and into the mid 80's. So I spent a lot of my childhood on this campus at sporting events, practice, etc. The building has sat empty for a number of years and looks little like it did in its heyday. So I wanted to capture it as I remember it while there was enough of the building there to help me mentally reconstruct what it was once like.
D. F. Douglass High School was named for Dennis Fulton Douglass, an African American educator who was born to parents who were slaves in 1860 in Augusta, Georgia. After completing college, he held a number of positions in education and publishing with the aim to improve the condition of African Americans. He would eventually come to Montezuma in 1906 to take over as principal of the Montezuma Public School. He died in 1929 but his tireless work on the behalf of his community was remembered when a new school was opened for the black community in 1958.
To see more of my local art, art from around Georgia, and beyond, be sure to check out MarkOnArt.com
Uploaded
September 7th, 2019
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