Hunt Intermediate Academy, once R.E. Hunt High, now teems with life as construction workers are in the beginning stages of rebuilding what was damaged by an EF-3 tornado in February 2019.
Columbus Municipal School District officials gathered Friday morning to symbolically break ground at the Hunt campus. Legislators, local leaders and Hunt High alumni were present as they all played a part in getting funding for the building.
“Whatever happens with Hunt will be a great asset to this community,” said Pierre Beard, Ward 4 city councilman whose ward includes the school. “… To see this structure rebuilt brings back memories for all of us in attendance. Oftentimes historically Black communities are forgotten about. They get the least support and financial contributions, but not this time. Together we fly, and yes, we are stronger together.”
Construction should be completed around early June 2024. When work is complete, it will house CMSD sixth-graders, as well as have space for the R.E. Hunt Museum on local African American history.
The district will use a combination of insurance settlement and federal and state emergency management funds toward the estimated $16.5 million project to essentially rebuild the four-building complex on 20th Street North.
History
The school was once known as R.E. Hunt High after Robert Edward Hunt, a longtime educator and principal of Union Academy and Hunt High School. It was opened in 1953 after a 1940s study by Mississippi State University found “glaring inequalities between the white and Black schools in Lowndes County,” according to a history of the school provided by CMSD Public Information Officer Mary Pollitz.
The school was a Black school until Columbus Municipal School District desegregated in 1970, and it originally served seventh through 12th grades.
Laverne Green Leech with the R.E. Hunt Museum and Cultural Center spoke Friday about the history, noting there are people in the Black community with deep ties to the school from its inception to its closure.
“It mattered not if you rode a bus that probably got you to school just in time to eat lunch and as soon as you finished you had to board that same old, raggedy bus and go back home,” Leech joked. “It didn’t matter if you had to walk from the farthest boundaries of Southside, the sandy streets of Sandfield, … the flooded roads of Burns Bottom or the streets of Northside, Memphis Town and Frog Bottom, Hunt was the place to be, and we came rain or shine, sleet or snow. We made our way to the old Hunt High. It was our Mecca.”
R.E. Hunt School officially closed in 2011, and 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.
By 2019, the school was used as an alternative school and for after school programs before the tornado hit in February, rendering the building unusable.
Stanley Ellis, incoming superintendent, was at the ceremony as he is set to begin his duties for the district on Monday. He said growing up in a majority Black community in Laurel, he understands the importance of Hunt and is looking forward to carrying on the legacy.
“(Hunt housing sixth grade) gives the kids an opportunity for a fresh start,” Ellis told The Dispatch. “Typically when kids are transitioning from sixth grade to middle school, they have a lot of things going on. This is going to give us a fresh start for students, but it’s also going to be for the community for a little more life here. I can imagine coming down the road with those signs that say ‘kids crossing’ has been a void in the community, so I think it’s going to serve us well to open this building up to serve all students.”
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