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A group of former students of Lincoln Elementary School in southwest Berkeley returned last week to find a school that was significantly larger, better-landscaped, and more ethnically diverse than the one they left some 60 years ago. Oh, and yes, of course, the name has been changed, to Malcolm X Arts and Academics Magnet Elementary. 

The gathering was part of last weekend’s 50th reunion activities of the Berkeley High School Class of 1954. Reunion participants were encouraged to fan out across the city on Friday morning to visit their old elementary schools. 

At Malcolm X, the participants—all of whom were African-American—toured the school, poured over old class photos in the library, shared stories, and sat in on class sessions to answer student questions about “the old days.” They are part of a forgotten portion of Berkeley—middle class blacks who grew up in what they like to call “challenging economic circumstances” in the city just prior to World War II, and whose ranks were later overshadowed by the huge influx of Southern blacks who came up from Louisiana and Texas and Arkansas in the early ‘40s to work in the wartime shipping industries. 

Participants recalled a black East Bay community of the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s whose recreation events stretched from the tennis courts and baseball fields of San Pablo Playground in Berkeley—where barnstorming Negro League semipro teams used to draw large crowds for weekend games—to dances at the Paramount and Fox and T&D theaters in Oakland entertained by big-name performers like Nat King Cole. 

“My students were totally fascinated by them,” said second grade teacher Susan Alexander, reflecting on the class visit by the alumni. “They were most interested in one of the stories about how students used to be popped with a leather strap. When I asked my students what they would think if I did something like that to them, they looked at me like I was out of my mind.” 

Corporal punishment was outlawed in California in 1987, long before the second graders were born. 

Mort Hilliard, a former Lincoln student of the ‘40s, was amused by one question in particular: “Did you have cellphones back then?” 

“When I went to Lincoln, we had one telephone in our house,” he said. “When you picked it up, you had to ask the operator to get the number for you.” 

Jai Waggoner, Curriculum Coordinator at Malcolm X, was also fascinated by the reunion participants, particularly their memories. “I was amazed that they could look at photos and remember the names of all of those classmates,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard for us teachers to remember the names of all of the students in the classes we’re teaching.” 

One participant spent about 15 minutes jotting down the name of some 25 student crossing guards for the school history records to be kept in the library. The photos had been taken nearly 60 years ago. 

The student photo reminiscing prompted some good-natured “ribbing” and “boot-jacking,” included one gentle dig by Malcolm X principal Cheryl Chinn. Seeing a young photo of Homer Martin, who attended Lincoln in the late ‘40s, she asked, “What happened, Homer? You looked so good, then.” Martin smiled and shot back, “You’re trying to say that I look cute now, but I just looked cuter then.” The reunion crowd roared with laughter. 

Martin said that the Lincoln Elementary environment was “dramatically different” when he attended, particularly the racial makeup. “The school was 90 percent black in those days,” he said, even though the surrounding neighborhood was not all black. “I learned later that we were subject to red-lining. But, of course, I didn’t know that while I was a child.” 

Martin, who acted as contact man for the Malcolm X participants, chose not to limit the gathering to Berkeley class of ‘54 participants, and so the Malcolm X gathering included students who attended over roughly a 10 year period spanning the ‘40s. It also included 76 year old Newman Rebell, a Berkeley resident who graduated from the school in 1938. 

Rebell said that though he passes by Malcolm X “quite a bit” last Friday was the first time he had returned to the school since he graduated. He remembered the old Lincoln as a one-building school “with a lot of asphalt, all around.” When someone joked about it being a “one-room schoolhouse,” someone else said, “No, that’s a little bit further back than our time. You’re confusing us with Louisiana.” 

Most of reunion participants said that this was not the first time they’d gotten back together; in fact, they said that a group of longtime African-American Berkeley residents in their 60s regularly meet for breakfast, once a month, as a social event. They explained that the gatherings grew out of “penny-ante” poker games run by four or five old friends and enlarged, some two years ago, into the informal monthly events. 

“It’s primarily guys who grew up in Berkeley,” one of them said. “At this point, we even have some women show up.”?