Winchester’s Fire: Remembering Winchester Avenue School, Monroe, North Carolina’s Only African American High School

In 1966, a fire broke out at the Winchester Avenue School in Monroe, North Carolina. As the only segregated Black school in the city, some saw it as an unfortunate accident, while the Black residents suspected it was a deliberate attack on their school and the wider Winchester community. Their suspicion attests to the prevalence of anti-Black violence during the Jim Crow Era, whether towards persons or institutions. The transition out of the Jim Crow Era after the passage of Brown vs. Board of Education – defined by the desegregation of schools – has been taught as solely positive by the American education system, yet this view never takes into consideration the ways that desegregation led to the end of Black schools, the cornerstones of Black communities. The oral histories that follow tell that story, one that honors the memory of Black schools and recognizes their importance in painting a more vivid image of the Jim Crow South. These oral histories include stories from Winchester Avenue graduates about their time in the school as well as meditations on the importance of carrying on the school’s memory, demonstrated through their kids and grandkids’ knowledge of the school and through the Winchester Avenue School Reunion.