Paying Homage to Southwest High School

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH

"Paying Homage to Southwest High School"

Each month, my goal is to write three blogs--one each about People, Places and Things--that I feel have grand style.  One of my basic rules is that I do not write about People who are deceased, mainly because I prefer to acknowledge grand people while they are alive.  Likewise, I chose not to mention grand Things that one cannot currently attain.  Yet, on the other hand, in reference to Places, this month I’m making a one-time exception in honoring a grand place that is impossible to visit.

Thus far, I have revealed my love of Paris, France and my spiritual retreat location of Annie Ruby Falls.  However, the one place that stands high in my memory of grand places is a place that can no longer be experienced, no matter how much money you have earned or how much power you have garnered.  This place is so exclusive, only a precious few have been granted entry, and even fewer people in the world given its prized diploma.  This place in the 1970s.... was Southwest High School in Atlanta, Georgia,

A place that now stands only in the memories of the mighty, mighty Wolves. 

From a fairytale army of attendance-charting students, averaging 93% daily attendance rates to Atlanta’s first cohort of Advanced Placement students, of which I was a member of the first historic 14, Southwest High School in Atlanta, Georgia can never be forgotten.  Our nationally-ranked athletic teams and our envied cheerleaders, band members, majorettes, and bannerettes set a standard of excellence no other local high school, rather public or private, could contend with the mighty Wolves.

With a well over 80% college attendance record, the mighty Wolves have today become entrepreneurs, managers, professionals, credentialed technicians, supervisors, educators, politicians, public speakers, leaders, advocates and change-agents.  We are artists, singers, writers, publishers, dancers, directors, actors, and musicians.  We are travelers and doers.  We have spouses and special loved ones.  We have children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews. 

We own houses and cars and vacation homes and dream of even more.  We are the backbone of a society that gave us the halls of ivy even while in a secondary-level of school.  We were more than a high school.  Southwest High School was more than a high school.  It was a place filled with true life stories of the fictional Cosby Show. 

Yes, America, there was a place where African-American students were just that fabulous!

We did not have security checkpoints on campus for there wasn’t a need to bring a weapon to school.  We did not fear one another.  We didn’t need your new gold chain or fresh Air Jordan’s.  We were fine in our Nik-Nik shirts and freshly styled ‘fros.  We were Wolves.  The mighty, mighty Wolves.

And no, we were not coked-out druggies waiting for the next hit of meth.  Nor did we disengage from our families and friends, avoiding face-to-face conversations, in turn to become robotic zombies swiping screens from left-to right.  We were talkers and thinkers, and students who laughed.  We were flirters and daters and planners for our futures.  We had no time for idle jive.  We were the brothas and sistas of the future.

We were the Wolves and we walked the halls of the mighty, mighty Southwest High. Say it loud and proud!

*Vanessa Brantley  Style395.blogspot.com  February 8, 2017,  "Paying Homage to Southwest High School"   Volume 3, Blog 1b [vol. 3, 1-1c].