When Doris McSwine thinks of her time at R.E. Hunt High School, she doesn’t just remember classes or playing on the basketball team.
Instead, she thinks of her family.
“The teachers were like family, my schoolmates were like family,” McSwine said. “We may have disagreed at some points, but the next day or so, we were friends again. Nothing like what’s going on in the world today. We’ve got friends that we met 60 years ago that are still friends.”
McSwine attended the school from seventh through 12th grade, graduating in 1969. While the school didn’t officially close until 2011, McSwine was a part of the school’s second-to-last all-Black graduating class before Columbus Municipal School District desegregated in 1970.
After McSwine graduated, she moved to Elmhurst, Illinois. But more than a year ago, she started dreaming of bringing her Hunt family back to the city, inviting everyone who attended the school between 1954-1970 to gather for the school’s first historic reunion on July 6.
The reunion was attended by more than 225 people, including family members, friends and former Hunt attendees of all years, whether they graduated or not.
“During that time, a lot of us had to work and couldn’t go to school,” McSwine said. “Some of us had to go to the military. Some of the kids got married. … Some kids had kids. So, everybody wasn’t able to graduate for whatever reason it was, but that didn’t make them any different than any of us. So we still wanted to celebrate everybody as well.”
Mayor Keith Gaskin read a proclamation during the banquet welcoming the attendees of R.E. Hunt High School back for their reunion.
McSwine presented the city’s proclamation to Laverne Green Leach, who curates the R.E. Hunt Museum and Cultural Center.
In 2012, the R.E. Hunt Museum and Cultural Center opened in a portion of the school to collect, preserve and interpret the African American history of Lowndes County. A tornado damaged the building in February 2019. The museum is now being rebuilt.
Gaskin also briefly congratulated the former students during the banquet.
“Y’all should be especially proud of your success and your graduation there, because we know during that time, we were under ‘separate but equal,’ and we know it was not equal,” Gaskin said. “Your country, and your state, and your city, was not doing everything that they could at that time to make sure you were going to be prepared to be successful and you did it anyway.”
‘You did it anyway’
Carrie Howard, who graduated from Hunt in 1967, is now retired. She helped to emcee the banquet during the reunion, along with helping organize the reunion in other ways.
“I want to cry,” Howard said. “My heart is just filled with love and joy, because I’m participating in a dream. And it’s not even my dream. It’s Doris’s dream.”
Howard shared a few memories from the school, including winning the Betty Crocker academic contest, attending etiquette classes, and lining up in the hallways. Her foundation at Hunt High School allowed her to go on to work in accounting for many years, she said.
“As a result of my foundation, I was chief accountant of Cook County Hospital (in Chicago, Illinois) when it was the largest medical center in the country,” Howard said. “I have that accomplishment. It was exciting trading millions of dollars every day. I’m so thankful for this foundation.”
Charles Williams, who was a part of the class of 1965, called his time at Hunt “some of the best years of my life.” He spent his time in high school playing the bass drum in the band and following a more traditional academic route, studying algebra, physics, and geometry.
Those math skills helped Williams long after he left Columbus in a few ways.
“I went to Vietnam,” Williams said. “And it really helped me… I was in the artillery, and I was in the artillery survey, which is basically trig.
And I learned trig in the summer of ‘64, when the voter registration… when all the college kids came from the northern schools here for the summer of ‘64. I went to what they called Freedom School and I learned trig. I later went into an accounting program.”
Eventually, Williams ended up in Chicago, where he worked his last job with the police department there. He worked first as a detective in the violent crimes unit and then as a sergeant until he retired in 2008.
“I am very proud of the education that I got here in Hunt High School, and all of the friends that I still come back to as often as I can to Columbus,” he said.
George Hampton Irby, son of George “Happy” Irby, played on the R.E. Hunt High School football team when it won its first championship. Irby was later drafted to the New York Giants in 1969, though he didn’t play for them for long.
Irby said he remembers a well-rounded education, along with a lot of laughter and camaraderie on the field. But he also remembers seeing the Civil Rights movement touch his life for the first time, while growing up in the segregated school.
“I remember we played Corinth,” Irby said. “That was the year that Medgar Evers went to Ole Miss. And we were going to Corinth or coming back, and troops that were going to Oxford landed at the air base. And we saw all that and didn’t know what was going on. … The army trucks and all that. That was interesting and brought the movement closer to us, to see that.”
Irby said he always felt like his teachers cared about him and his classmates. The lessons they taught him guided him for the rest of his life.
“Even though we were segregated, I always had that theme that they taught us that you could be anything you wanted,” he said. “You just needed an education. Education has been paramount.”
Irby returned to Columbus many years ago. He has since been a community advocate, including carrying on his father’s legacy with the “Happy” Irby Christmas Fund at the Columbus Air Force Base.
With so many attendees of R.E. Hunt High School back together again, the school’s song rang out in the city once again, with a former attendee leading the chorus.
“Oh Hunt High, Oh Hunt High, we love you. May love shine through the doors. And when night falls, each lighted hall will shine forevermore.”
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