The first class to graduate from Rosa A. Temple High School after attending all four years there will hold its 50-year reunion this week in Vicksburg.

About 55 members of the class of 1962 are expected to attend events that will run from Thursday night to Sunday afternoon, said reunion chairman Bobbie Bass.

“This is an exciting occasion,” Bass said. “The first few reunions we had, after five or 10 years, we took them for granted, I think. By the time we got to the 40th and especially the 45th, we just realized how good it was to see everybody. We just don’t know today what’s going to take place tomorrow.”

Bass said the class of ’62 is dedicating its golden reunion to members’ parents and teachers for “letting us know that life was not going to be easy but through education was our trip in the world.”

About 130 students graduated in 1962 from Temple, the school for blacks built in 1958, named for longtime Vicksburg educator Rosa A. Temple. Some went on to be professors, engineers, accountants, ministers, nurses and members of the military, Bass said. Seventy-nine have died.

Reunion events include an honorary ceremony Thursday night at Memorial Stadium at Vicksburg High School with a speech by senior class president Robert M. Walker, later elected the first black mayor of Vicksburg; a classmates-only reception Friday night; Saturday night banquet; and a church service at King David No. 1 M.B. Church on Letitia Street, open to the public, at 1 p.m. Sunday.