Community seeks to save memory of historic school

Terry Webster

Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2001 | 9:55 a.m.

Madison Elementary School has endured desegregation, fire, criticism from the state Department of Education and a community protest over its name being changed.

Through it all, the 48-year-old school at 1030 J. St. has showed staying power.

Its long and sometimes painful tenure will soon become a part of West Las Vegas' past, after a new school, called Wendell P. Williams Elementary School, is built and Madison is demolished next year. Students will continue to attend the old school until the new one is completed in fall 2002.

Before that happens, school officials and community members want to preserve Madison's history.

Principal Carol Foster and her staff are compiling a historical yearbook on the school. They also are planning a spring gala for alumni and friends of Madison.

"This school has been a big part of the community," Foster said.

In the mid-1970s Madison was damaged by a fire. When the state began ranking schools by test scores in 1998, Madison was placed on the list of those needing improvement.

Last year a group of West Las Vegas residents protested the school's renaming from Madison, honoring President James Madison, to Wendell Williams, honoring the Las Vegas assemblyman who authored the 1999 state law that provided funding to rebuild older schools. Madison is one of the first to be rebuilt under that law.

The task of recording the school's history, however, won't be easy. Detailed records are sketchy.

That's common in Clark County, according to historian Frank Wright, of the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society.

"Historical preservation, if it's thought of at all in Clark County, tends to be an afterthought," Wright said. "This is a place where we demolish buildings and then say, 'Whoops, maybe we should have done something with its history.' "

Much of Clark County's history, he said, isn't even written down.

"It's inside people's heads," Wright said.

Madison's link to a desegregation movement that spanned from the 1970s to the early 1990s is a part of history that remains vivid in the mind of community activist Marzette Lewis.

Black students were bused to other schools throughout the city, while white students were brought to West Las Vegas for the sixth grade, Lewis said.

According to school district documents, it began with a 1968 class action lawsuit filed against School Board that alleged the district was operating a segregated school system in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Black students then accounted for more than 97 percent of the population in West Las Vegas schools.

In December 1970 a court ruled that the district had intentionally segregated elementary schools in West Las Vegas. But the ruling held that the district's high schools were fully integrated.

Under a court order, the district developed the Sixth Grade Center Plan, which was implemented in September 1972. Madison was one of several West Las Vegas schools participating in the plan, which involved turning the predominately black West Las Vegas elementary schools into centers for sixth graders throughout the Las Vegas Valley.

Until 1992 the district ran the centers, assigning all sixth graders in Las Vegas and North Las Vegas to one of them. Meanwhile, West Las Vegas students in grades one through five were bused to schools in other parts of Las Vegas.

The result was that children from other neighborhoods were affected only one year, while West Las Vegas students were bused for five years, Lewis said.

Lewis led a boycott in August 1992, pulling children into local churches and community centers to attend classes taught by retired teachers and others who opposed the desegregation movement.

"We brought the district to its knees," she said. "They had no choice but to give us back our community schools.

A year ago Lewis led a protest over the renaming of Madison, but it was unsuccessful.

Like Lewis, others with ties to Madison and its neighborhood have stayed in West Las Vegas.

Lizzie Chilton, who moved to Las Vegas in 1946, watched her children and grandchildren grow up at Madison.

"Back in 1946 there was not too much in the area at all," she said. "It was nothing but little one-bedroom shacks with a stove in one end and a table in the other."

The oppression of blacks in Las Vegas, Lewis said, is almost too painful to talk about.

"But I want our children to know what happened to us," she said.

Although Chilton, like others, is sad to see Madison go, she said, the new school will be better for the kids.

Linda Williams also attended Madison, then became a teacher at the school in 1996 after she completed her college degree.

She recalled childhood memories of Madison.

"We used to go up there after school and play basketball and play on the monkey bars," she said.

The latest round of Madison students, those now in the school, have mixed feelings about its closing.

"I've gone here my whole life and I don't want them to tear it down," fifth grader Princess Worthen said.

Fourth grader Lanesha Hardin said the new school will be better, because it will offer more for students.

The two-story design of the new school -- the first of its kind in the state -- will feature a turtle habitat, new supplies and furniture and new computers and technology.

Despite all of that, the old school won't vanish unnoticed.

"When it comes down, there are going to be some tears," said Rhonda Simmons, a counselor at Madison. "And some of those tears are going to be mine."