“We were put on the hill by a dumpster,” Bobbie Bass recalls fifty-seven years after walking through the halls of Rosa A. Temple High School for the last time.

The story of Rosa started in the middle of the school year in 1959. The students started the school year at Bowman High School, but made the move to Rosa following Christmas break.

Rosa, the lone African American high school in Vicksburg, opened without the school board even planting grass on the hill where the school sat. But for students who had been overcoming struggles their entire lives, this was just another hurdle to cross.

The parents came together and raised the money to plant grass and trees and create a school where the students could be proud.

The school closed its doors for the last time in 1971, but for the students who went there, that pride still permeates throughout their entire beings and defines them as people.

“What is Rosa A. Temple to me?” Johnnie Coleman Johnson, a 1960 graduate of the school said. “My life. My love. My pride. It is me. It made me who I was and who I became. It molded me into a not a perfect person, but a solid person. I could withstand whatever was shoved out at me.”

From the school’s humble beginnings, the staff and the students worked together to build one of the most acclaimed African American high schools in the state of Mississippi. Students went on to excel in college both academically and athletically going to Harvard, Michigan State, St. Bonaventure and more as they built upon the foundation given them by Rosa’s teachers.

“When they say Rosa A. Temple it is just like Superman. You put your chest out,” Joseph Caldwell Connor, a 1960 graduate of the school, said. “The thing is, I played in the band and I had a good time. It took me to Alcorn where I played in the band all four years. The teachers prepared us for what we were going to do out there in the world.”

Segregated into their own school, the African American students who attended Rosa were given every reason to give up. The books they used were well-worn hand-me-downs. The only transportation for students who lived in the county was a single bus and students within the city were on their own to make it to school.

Despite the odds they didn’t just make it, they excelled and left a lasting legacy on Vicksburg that is still felt today.

“Our teachers, God rest their souls, we only have one that I am aware of who is still around,” said Elijah Johnson Jr., president of Rosa’s inaugural graduating class in 1959. “In my opinion, they gave a whole lot of love and care towards us. They wanted us to achieve. That was one of the things that made it so easy for us.”

The first African American mayor of Vicksburg was Rosa graduate Robert Major Walker. The school produced doctors, professors, minsters and more.

“Rosa A. Temple was a great place in a time when we needed it,” Alonzo Stevens, a 1970 Rosa graduate, said. “There were a lot of things going on in the ‘60s and the ‘70s. It was a proud place and a culture that everybody wanted to be a part of. Everybody wanted to get to that hill. We were safe. We were loved and we were pushed.”

For most of the 12 years the school was open, the principal was Jim Stirgus Sr. Along with his teachers, Stirgus cultivated an environment where the students were not given the option to fail.

“He knew every student who was in the school,” Stirgus’s son Jim Stirgus Jr. said. “My dad would stand on top of the stairs and when the bell would ring he would count them and if they were not there, he would pick up the phone and call someone. He made sure they learned. His major emphasis was you are just as good as anybody else.”

Elliot Coleman, TJ Watson, Frank Crump Jr., Barbara Francis Banks and band director Lewis W. “Jiving” Jones were but a few of the teachers who left a lasting impact on the students who attended Rosa.

“If you didn’t have something, I don’t know where they got it from, but they came up with whatever was needed,” Abraham Green Jr., a 1966 graduate of Rosa, said. “It was a pride for me to go to Rosa A. Temple High School. We came from a place where people cared about you. If they didn’t care about you, you didn’t know it. It developed me. I got development out of Rosa A. Temple that I couldn’t get at home. I think my daddy finished the sixth grade and my momma finished the seventh grade.”

Gathered in the hall of King David 1, the small group of Rosa graduates couldn’t wait to tell the stories of the school that continues to define them. Decked out in his Rosa hat that is his near constant companion and his Buccaneer legends t-shirt, Stevens can run through every starting quarterback the school ever saw including their win loss records. He continued the school’s athletic legacy as a coach at Vicksburg High and Alcorn State.

“When you look at Temple and you look at what Temple has produced, it was awesome,” Stevens said. “It was a time when African American kids were pushed and were never told what they couldn’t do. We never heard it come out what we can’t do. You had to live it to believe it. When we got a book there were four names in it before we got it. The teachers never slacked. I never heard one of my high school teachers complain.”

Elijah Johnson has made it his life’s work to chronicle the history of his school and the lives of his classmates.

The education afforded her at Temple carried Johnnie Coleman Johnson first to Dillard University in New Orleans and later to her masters in nursing where she was the only African American student in her class.

Each of them has found success in life, which they trace right back to their time as a Buccaneer up on the hill by the dumpster.

“We have had some great minds in this school. There are so many different areas we have excelled in and I hope this legacy continues. Our teachers had so much passion for us. We had teachers who cared about us, who knew us personally,” Coleman Johnson said. “People who came from Rosa A. Temple were strong academically, physically, emotionally and socially. When you say something about Rosa A. Temple it just warms your heart.”