Hopewell School closed in 1968 and its pupils walked into a hostile white school
Avon Park’s segregated Black school closed in 1968, fourteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, and its children were transferred into the town’s previously all-white school. The Highlands News-Sun reported the account given at a reunion held at the Avon Park Community Center in February 2026, organized by the Historical Society of Avon Park, the Heartland Cultural Alliance and the Avon Park Chamber of Commerce under the title “Hopewell History: For the Love of Education”:[newssun-hopewell-2026]
“Finally, in 1968 the school closed and it had a huge impact on the Black children who had to integrate into the white school. When the students were integrated they didn’t feel like they had a say. They felt like they were torn apart, but they had to go along with it. They felt the separation and the sadness.”
In the words of the pupils
Ernest Cooper, a former Hopewell pupil:
“When they closed the school, I didn’t like that. It was hard for the Black people to come to Avon Park school. They didn’t like us. Mr. (Jeremiah) Boone would pick the kids up in his truck before work to bring the kids to Avon Park. We didn’t have a bus. We were fighting all the time. They never taught us about Black people. We had our culture at Hopewell. It was like family. We loved our school.”[newssun-hopewell-2026]
Perditha Williams, on what integration did and did not extend to:
“The boys were allowed to play sports at Avon Park. My brothers played sports and I remember walking down the street uptown and they (the white boys) loved my brothers on the field, but when they walked down the street, they would walk on the other side to keep from speaking to them.”[newssun-hopewell-2026]
Two details deserve to be stated plainly rather than folded into the quotations. The county provided no transport. A private individual, Jeremiah Boone, drove Black children to their new school in his own truck before going to work. And the children arrived to open hostility: “We were fighting all the time.”
Desegregation Timeline and Faculty Integration
Desegregation in Highlands County began in 1966 on a voluntary basis among high school seniors across the county’s secondary schools, followed in 1968 by full district-wide consolidation of student bodies and instructional personnel[maxwell-1976].
Unlike many Southern districts where Black educators were dismissed wholesale during desegregation, Hopewell’s leadership was retained in the unified system. Principal Earnest E. Sims was appointed assistant principal of the integrated Avon Park schools, and subsequently assistant principal of Avon Park Middle School, serving until his retirement in 1971[maxwell-1976].
The Hopewell campus itself was enlarged and repurposed by the school district to house kindergarten, first and second grades, and specialized educational programs for the children of migrant agricultural workers, continuing under administrators including E. Leon Garner before transferring to non-profit early-childhood operation[maxwell-1976].
Avon Park was integrated without a court case
Highlands County does not appear as a party to any reported school desegregation proceeding. A systematic search of CourtListener’s case-law and docket collections — covering the Fifth Circuit, the Middle District of Florida and the Florida state courts, across more than a dozen query forms — turns up no opinion, docket or order naming the Highlands County Board of Public Instruction or the Avon Park schools in a desegregation suit. The Fifth Circuit’s consolidated Florida school cases of 1969-1971 name Bay County and Alachua County among their joined Florida defendants; Highlands is not among them.[courtlistener]
That is a searched negative, not an assumption, and it should be read carefully. It does not mean nobody pressed the county. Districts of this size were very commonly brought into line by an unpublished, unappealed district-court consent order, or by the threat of a federal funding cut-off from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and neither leaves a trace in any case-law database. What it does mean is that if Highlands County was sued, the case never reached a reported appellate decision.
References
- newssun-hopewell-2026 — Margaret Graham, Highlands News-Sun. Hopewell Elementary School educators encouraged Black students to excel. 20 February 2026. https://www.midfloridanewspapers.com/highlands_news-sun/news/hopewell-elementary-school-educators-encouraged-black-students-to-excel/article_19e16e62-e184-4a07-8dff-29f16d1f2cc5.html
- maxwell-1976 — Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell. The First Hundred Years of Avon Park. 1976. the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md
- courtlistener — Free Law Project. CourtListener case-law and docket search, Free Law Project. 1 September 2026. https://www.courtlistener.com/
Related
- Entity: Hopewell School, Avon Park
- Entity: Ernest E. Sims
- Report: the schools of Avon Park
- Finding: Hagan’s Turpentine Still was the Hagan Naval Stores Company
- Finding: for one year Highlands County’s Black secondary school was named for Sebring and Avon Park together
- Finding: in 1951 the Avon Park city council threw out every vote cast in the Black precinct
- Finding: Black schooling in Highlands County measured, 1950
- Finding: the record of Black Avon Park is almost entirely missing
Where this comes from
- Evidence
- corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
- Review
- unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
- Rights
- society
Sources
- Margaret Graham, Highlands News-Sun, Hopewell Elementary School educators encouraged Black students to excel (2026)
- Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park (references/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976)
- Free Law Project, CourtListener case-law and docket search, Free Law Project (2026)
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