Mrs. Rosa A. Temple Annex Longtime educator honored with name of new school wing
Published 12:07 pm Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Rosa A. Temple has come back to the school that bore her name for more than a dozen years.
The newly constructed annex at Vicksburg Junior High School — Rosa A. Temple High School from 1958 to 1971when schools were segregated for blacks and whites — was dedicated to the longtime educator Tuesday evening.
The decision to name the annex after Temple was approved by the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees in November after principal Michael Winters said a canvass of community members, parents and faculty “overwhelmingly” favored the name Mrs. Rosa A. Temple Annex.
“Mrs. Rosa A. Temple dedicated over 60 years of service to Vicksburg and Warren County as an educator,” Winters said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house, attended by Temple alumni, current VJHS faculty and staff and community members and leaders.
Winters remarked on the “joy, excitement and pride” that Rosa A. Temple High School alumni show when he talks with them in planning reunions. “I want our students of Vicksburg Junior High School to have that same pride, that same love” for the school, he said.
The addition, which has been in construction for about a year, has provided a wing of 10 classrooms to replace temporary trailers that had been in use behind the school for 25 years.
The construction was financed with about $1.6 million in interest-free Mississippi Qualified School Construction Bonds, a program made available through federal stimulus money, to be repaid over about 15 years.
The annex houses seventh-grade classrooms which Tuesday night’s guests toured after a big bow of green and white ribbons was cut by Winters, Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Duran Swinford and school board president Zelmarine Murphy. Student work and projects decorated hallway bulletin boards and classrooms, and many teachers were in attendance to greet guests.
Rosa A. Temple was born Sept. 4, 1869. After attending Cherry Street High School and Jackson College, she began teaching in Vicksburg in 1885, when she was just 16 years old, Winters said.
In more than 60 years as an educator, Temple taught all levels but spent most of her years as a high school English teacher. She was known for exacting, uncompromising standards of excellence and for inspiring students and those who worked with her. She retired in 1947.
At the Vicksburg Riverfront Murals, a panel depicting Temple and the school carries this inscription, which Swinford read before the ribbon-cutting:
“Noted for its academics and athletics, Rosa A. Temple High School became one of the most prestigious high schools in the state of Mississippi. The philosophy of this school was based upon the belief that every child, regardless of social position, or intelligence, should have an opportunity to totally develop his or her individual abilities and interests, so that he or she may be able to practice those ideals which characterize good citizens of a democracy.”
Temple, who was 102 when she died in 1972, is buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery.