One room, many successes

• By ANNABELLE ARMSTRONG
• Special to Magazine
• Published: Aug 17, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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From 1936 to 1955, a one-room schoolhouse on Bayou Paul Lane in St. Gabriel was a life-changing phenomenon for hundreds of African-American children.

Successful adults today, they still sing the praises of their late teacher, Amanda Anderson Grace, who taught grades one through eight and inspired her students to excel.

More than 200 turned out for a dedicatory program for the cypress schoolhouse on a June Sunday earlier this year, paying tribute to Grace in speech, song and proclamation and recalling happy years of togetherness. Restored and moved to a larger site on Bayou Paul, the schoolhouse is located in a public park, The Amanda Anderson Grace Park, owned by the city of St. Gabriel.

“She didn’t want us to go through what our parents did,” said Jesse Thomas of St. Gabriel, retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant, who teaches culinary arts with certification courses at the Louisiana Youth Challenge Program in Carville. “She drilled into us, ‘Strive today for a better tomorrow,’ and she did this not just with words but by her daily life and the way she carried herself.

“I teach this to my kids at Carville. I say to them, ‘Don’t wait for someone else to come along to help you. Help yourself!’ Except for my parents, Mrs. Grace impacted my life and career more than anyone.”

Grace, who died in 2004 at 87, was remembered first as an educator but also as a great-hearted, take-charge person who influenced a whole community. “One of the great leaders of her time” is the way the Rev. Lionel Johnson, first chairman of the Southern University Board of Supervisors, said it. “Another mother” was a frequent description, also.

Without air-conditioning and free food service, the schoolhouse was a challenge for Grace, who focused on academics and the whole person, with older students helping younger. With 38 to 45 children crammed into one room, grades first through seventh, and an eighth grade added later, it was so crowded that parents had to look through windows from the outside to view programs. Reading, spelling, writing, arithmetic, geography and history were taught here.

“Their parents were poorer than poor,” said Grace in a 1989 interview. “Most chopped sugar cane or picked moss for 50 cents a day.”

Grace, with her students, prepared lunch, sometimes using greens brought by Olevia Thomas from her garden. She scrounged for school supplies. Through it all, she brought joy. When she played ball with the children at recess, and they pleaded for another inning, she would say, “Fine, but you will have to do something for me.” That something was more homework.

She called those years “a real blast.”

After the schoolhouse closed, Grace continued teaching and became interim principal at Sunshine High School, an all-black school. After integration in the early 1970s, she was transferred to St. Gabriel Elementary School to teach first grade. That pleased her mightily, since teaching was her passion. She retired in 1976.

She was encouraged always by her husband, Hayward, a self-employed bus driver for public schools and private use. They saw their four sons and an adopted daughter, plus countless former students, gain college educations and pursue successful careers.

The home of Hayward and Amanda Grace was a place of hospitality. They reared four sons: the oldest, Hayward Jr., died of a heart attack in 1991 at age 63. College educated, the Graces’ children made them proud.