IN MY HOMETOWN, there was a historic school that at least three generations of my family attended: Benjamin Banneker. It was the “colored” school that my grandparents and parents attended from 1st through 9th grades and later my (integrated) elementary school from kindergarten through 4th grade.

My parents and their peers would attend the school through ninth grade after which they were bussed out of town to attend one of several Black high schools in the region. My grandparents either ended their education at this point or were bussed to–if they could afford to pay–the high school: Delaware Normal School (now Delaware State University).

Eventually in 1961 well after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision outlawed school segregation, Benjamin Banneker became integrated and was changed to the elementary school I would attend. The high schools to which my parents and their peers had been bussed became middle schools or were absorbed into the schools that had previously been for White students only.

As a child, Benjamin Banneker was my elementary school during the week and a community center during out-of-school hours. It was bordered by Black neighborhoods and we walked there all the time. The playgrounds were a neighborhood recreation site. In the summer they were where the federal free lunch and breakfast meals were distributed and they hosted supervised play called “Summer Playground.”

The building–the cafeteria and gymnasium anyway–hosted community events–like Black history month programs and gospel concerts. One of my fondest memories is playing Harriet Tubman Ross in one of those events. carrying my grandfather’s antique replica gun to punctuate my monologue.

In so many ways, Banneker remained The Black School long after segregation. During my tenure in the 1980s, even the principal was a Black man.

Sadly, the Benjamin Banneker building no longer exists. In 2003, the building that was at that time the oldest elementary school still in use in the state was furtively demolished with little community input. A new building was erected using its name but none of the physical elements or features of the original facility.

Today, another school in the district, however, has avoided demolition and is enjoying a renovation and intense community discussion. Built in 1929, that building was once the local high school for White students; the one that would remain segregated for years after Brown versus Board because integration attempts after Brown vs. Board failed so violently.

Its “history” was deemed so significant that despite being closed since 2012 and considered in irrevocable disrepair, Milford Middle School is being refurbished and original elements, like its gymnasium, are being preserved.

While I was a student at the school–it had become a middle school by then–I knew nothing about the failed integration attempt; not even that my aunt had been one of the “Milford Eleven” who had been a member of the group of children that tried to integrate it. My family is one of stories, yet I guess this one was too traumatic to relive for pre-adolescent ears during those years.

A historic marker will commemorate the trauma of those courageous children. Suddenly, this history is significant enough that the cost to repair the building and honor its past is not too burdensome an ask on the district.

Meanwhile, Banneker, the historic “colored school” is a collection of memories; a Google search yields nearly no historic photos and very little history about “Dupont School 163-C.” My parents were able to retrieve one of Banneker’s bricks before its remains were hurriedly removed from the site though the new school that bears it name and street address sits adjacent rather than directly on the former site.

The lone brick, photos and perhaps some yearbooks–my parents don’t have any of the latter–are among the few physical reminders that Banneker was ever there. Even the faded playgrounds that remain have not been put to any use by the new school, the district, or the city.

By the time I completed my first collegiate history course at my HBCU I was angry at all of the stories that had been omitted, half-told, and not told at all during my education up to that point. I was rightfully distrustful of anything else my teachers had or had not shared and it took years for my rage to subside. (I’m not altogether convinced it has).

This tale of two schools is not a metaphor; not symbol or parable. It is an example of how history is systemically erased in this country. While many complain that this is a new practice of the current administration, it’s not. It’s a tale as old as the history of the American project.

Take only part of the story and you have rewritten it. It is no longer the same story.

I recently read a sentiment that upon our end, our “things” don’t or won’t matter; that our favorite shirt or a piece of jewelry cannot hold essence or legacy. I could not disagree more. Fashion Fair’s rum raisin nail polish; Jean Nate, Brach’s Neapolitan candies, “house dresses,” and the French doors of my grandparents’ home are all physical legacy I cherish and that remind me that the people who were home to them existed and existed as significant parts of the universe including our community’s and of course, my own. To inherit the wealth of a home, land, costly artifacts has ensured very specific segments of this country’s population hold and pass forward wealth while others remain severely poor. Therefore, this cannot be true.

Of course, it is possible that physical things are not the *only* means to hold legacy but like the National Museum of African American History and Culture artifacts tell “a people’s journey and a nation’s story” these things have the capacity–especially for people who have been historically dehumanized, disembodied, and minimized to near erasure–to mark that they were here; that they matter in the broader “story;” that their existence is significant.

The way my hometown has handled these two schools demonstrates its role, like so many small and not-so-small jurisdictions, in the story of the American experiment. As its landscape has changed since my long ago leaving with the removal of buildings like Banneker and the addition of schools, restaurants, housing developments, it’s hard not to notice the demographics shifting too both meeting and being met by a new story: a reimagined landscape that erases its history for the comfort of an apparently desired demographic.

Benjamin Banneker should still be sitting at the corner of North Street updated but with preservation of its gymnasium and a historical marker about the site’s significance to the story of our city, state, and country–just like that school across town on Lakeview Avenue. One site is no more “historic” than the other except if one believes that one [hi]story is more significant than another; that one [hi]story deserves telling while another does not; that one [hi]story is best erased.

As the folk saying goes: “You ain’t slick.” Newcomers have supplanted the community that Banneker represents. The powers-that-be no doubt expect the decision to benefit the city’s coffers. After all, has greed not always been the undergirding of the American experiment including, but not limited to, its racism?

**postscript**
My sisters and I were avid readers so the annual Summer Reading Program at the local library was as much a hallmark of our summers as Mr. Tom Harris’s tomatoes, vacation Bible school, and freeze cups.

The stories we sought out were ones in which Black people figured prominently: works by Virginia Hamilton, Mildred D. Taylor, Frank Bonham. These were not the stories readily found in our school or small classroom libraries but they complemented our history lessons; rounded out what we watched on classic films like Roots and Cooley High–which was how we imagined the high school experience captured on the pages of our parents’ high school yearbooks. The whole story was what we craved; what we needed and deserved. But our education in both schools denied us and our peers that. Generations later, they still are.