Education: More Schools
The rapid population growth of the Urban Expansion era resulted in a great increase in the number of schools in Palm Beach County. From 1964 to 1966, for example, 13 new elementary schools opened.
Desegregation of Palm Beach County public schools happened gradually, from 1961 to 1973. The separate schools of the 1940s and ‘50s were maintained for the most part until 1970, when the School District converted its four all-black high schools to integrated junior highs.
The Osborne [Elementary] School on Douglas Street was the first black school in Lake Worth, constructed in 1948 by local self-taught builders, P.W. Odums, Able Wilson, and Frank Jones; Osborne operated until 1971 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1980 the building reopened as a community education facility.
From the 1940s, Belle Glade’s black children in grades 1-12 attended Everglades Vocational High School. In 1955 Everglades was renamed Lake Shore High School for grades 7-12 and offered a more college preparatory education. In 1970 Lake Shore High was converted to Lake Shore Junior High School. Grades 1-6 attended Everglades Camp at a migrant labor camp. Glades Central Community High School opened in 1970.
In 1950 Industrial High School in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County’s first black high school, was renamed Roosevelt Junior-Senior High; in 1971 Roosevelt became Palmview Elementary, now named for former principal U.B. Kinsey.
The School Board ignored the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision against separate-but-equal schools and built two black high schools during the next three years, including West Riviera Junior High School, renamed Lincoln High (now Lincoln Elementary) in 1959. Until then, black students from Jupiter and Riviera Beach had attended Roosevelt High in West Palm Beach. During desegregation, Lincoln became a junior high school. John F. Kennedy High (now JFK Middle, a magnet school) opened in Riviera Beach after President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.
The Benjamin School
S. Bruce MacDonald (1928-)
In 1968 S. Bruce McDonald became Palm Beach County’s first black principal of an all-white school, Boca Raton Junior High (now Boca Raton Middle School), which was completed in 1969. McDonald had been teacher and assistant principal at Roosevelt High School and administrator at Central Junior High between 1956 and 1970. From Boca Raton, he went on to become area superintendent of schools and filled other administrative positions until he retired in 1984.
Leander A. Kirksey (1909-1995)
L.A. Kirksey Street, in West Palm Beach is named for the band director at Industrial High School, which became Roosevelt High, in West Palm Beach from 1946 to 1970. The son of a slave, Kirksey graduated from Florida A&M University, where he then taught music and was director of its famous “Marching 100” band from 1930 to 1945. Although primarily a violinist, Kirksey played all instruments well, according to one of his many successful students, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.
In 1941 Kirksey co-founded the Florida Association of Band Directors, which merged with the Florida Bandmasters Association in 1966. He was the first black inducted into the Florida Music Education Association’s Hall of Fame.