Minden High School (Minden, Louisiana)

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Minden High School (MHS) is the public secondary educational institution in Minden, a small city of 13,000 and the seat of Webster Parish located twenty-eight miles east of Shreveport in northwestern Louisiana. MHS houses grades nine through twelve (and a small number of eighth graders) but originally handled grades one through eleven prior to the establishment of the twelfth grade.

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[edit] School history

Minden was founded in 1837 by Charles H. Veeder, a New York native who shaped the community into that of a parallelogram and divided the area into lots. He named the settlement after the home of his ancestors in Germany. Minden thereafter became the largest town in old Claiborne Parish, a part of which was separated to be included in the newer Webster Parish, named for Massachusetts statesman Daniel Webster.

In 1838, Minden received one of the first charters for a public school from the Louisiana State Legislature. Though the school charged tuition, it was open to all white children. Hence known as "Minden Academy", the school later split into the Minden Male Academy and the Minden Female College, both of which operated into the late 1890s. The current Minden High School is located on College Street on the site of Veeder's original Minden Academy.

In 1897, the Webster Parish School Board voted to establish a central high school in Minden. The trustees of the already existing Minden Normal and Business College offered a building. In 1901, the first year of its existence as a high school, MHS graduated one senior, Harry Crichton. Since that time, more than six thousand have received diplomas from the institution. As a result of the consolidation with the former historically African-American Webster High School, the Class of 1975, with 248 graduates, became the largest in school history. Other high schools were thereafter established in the Webster Parish communities of Dubberly, Heflin, Sibley, Doyline, Shongaloo, Sarepta, Cotton Valley, and in Springhill, the second largest city in the parish located adjacent to the Arkansas state boundary.

There are four public elementary schools in Minden: William G. Stewart, E.S. Richardson, J.E. Harper and J.L. Jones. These schools send pupils to Webster Junior High School, which in turn directs them to Minden High School.

[edit] Construction: 1924, 1954, 2007

In 1924, a new two-story brick MHS building was located on College Street. It was used as the principal school facility until 1954, when a new brick structure opened to the east of the existing building. The 1924 structure continued to be used as a classroom building and as a girls' gymnasium until the early 21st century. It was razed in 2005 to make room for yet another new MHS building complex. This latest renovated MHS, though not yet fully complete, opened at the same location in August 2007.

The new three-story structure features air-conditioned classrooms, a new gymnasium, computer services, and a cafeteria. After several defeats at the polls, including the rejection of a proposed new campus near Interstate 20, community and business leaders pushed through a $33 million tax package in an election held in January 2004. The renovations will hence replace the older Minden High and Webster Junior High campuses and upgrade elementary schools as well. The junior high facility will not be available until August 2008.

[edit] Superintendent E.S. Richardson

E.S. Richardson (1875-1950) served as Webster Parish superintendent from 1921-1936. In the summer of 1927, he made appearances across the nation to explain the school improvement and consolidation plan that he had created in Webster Parish. He spoke in seven states to educational conferences on what some had termed the "Webster miracle." Richardson continued with his reforms by the establishment of a uniform promotion plan of four principal points:

1) Promotions in the first three grades were based on work done in reading and numbers. For the second grade, a student had to perform in two minutes fifteen simple addition problems and nine subtraction problems.

2) In grades 4-7 a pupil had to pass arithmetic, reading, and language before being eligible for promotion. He could still be promoted with one failure in either of the other major subjects, history, civics, geography, and health.

3) A pupil absent from school for the last marking period could return for the final examinations provided he had performed passing work in arithmetic, reading, and language at the time of his withdrawal, and provided that his absence was for sufficient cause.

4) Examinations were given at the beginning of each year to pupils, on request, if they failed two subjects, one of which could be arithmetic, reading, or language. Pupils who withdrew from school after attending as much as one hundred days could hence take examinations in all subjects with a view of promotion, provided they were doing passing work in reading, arithmetic, and language at the time of their withdrawal.

Pupils absent during the last marking period and who returned for the final examinations but failed to make passing grades, could again take examinations in the subjects in which they failed. Uniform tests were prepared by the superintendent and teachers and advertised in the newspaper as to when and where they would be administered. By defining this policy, Richardson hoped to further the standardization he established in nearly all aspects of the parish system, from furniture to textbooks.

Richardson was previously the superintendent in Bienville Parish from 1916-1920, when at forty-five, he took the top position in Webster Parish. He left Webster Parish schools in 1936, when he began a five-year stint as the president of Louisiana Tech University (then Louisiana Polytechnic Institute) in Ruston. He is honored by the naming of E. S. Richardson Elementary on East Todd Street in the eastern part of Minden.

[edit] W. W. Williams years

W. W. Williams (1917-2000), a native of Leesville, the seat of Vernon Parish in western Louisiana, was principal of Minden High School from 1953-1961. During his administration, the new building opened in 1954, as did a new American football stadium. In addition, a track, a covered walkway from the main building to the gymnasium, and parking lots were constructed. At the time, the gym contained one of the few indoor heated swimming pools in the state. Minden swim teams were state champions every single year of Williams' tenure. (The pool was closed in 1981 because of maintenance problems.)

The MHS Crimson Tide was the state football champion in 1954 and 1956, the basketball champion in 1955 and 1959, and the runner-up in 1954, the baseball champion in 1956 and runner-up in 1954-1955, and the Gulf Open golf champion in 1956. Shreveport sports writers at the time began to refer to Minden teams as the "Home of the Champions." Even when the teams did not win statewide, they were invariably district champions in the respective sports. In 1960, the football team secured the district title but lost to Neville High School, a longstanding athletic rival in Monroe. The team won statewide again in 1963, when current Superintendent Wayne Williams, Jr., the older son of W. W. Williams, was a junior player, and, most recently, in 1980.

MHS during the late 1950s and early 1960s ranked in the top 1 percent on national standardized test scores in English, the top 2 percent in science, the top 3 percent in mathematics, and the top 5 percent in social studies. The school has yet to match those tallies once again.

[edit] Desegregation

MHS was desegregated in January 1966, when two African-American male students were enrolled. On May 24, 1966, Elroy Allums became the first black in history to graduate from Minden High School. A second phase of desegregation ordered by the United States District Court in Shreveport was launched in the middle 1970s, with the closure and consolidation of the former all-black Webster High School effective with the 1974-75 school year. Thereafter, MHS became majority black in enrollment. The latest total is 54 percent black, 45 percent white, and 1 percent Hispanic. Some whites vacated the institution for the private Glenbrook High School, which was established in 1970, or for home schooling, which particularly gained popularity in the 1990s.

[edit] Notable faculty and administrators

  • Everett Doerge, Class of 1954 (1935-1998) -- Social Studies; member of the Louisiana House of Representatives
  • Jean M. Doerge -- Business; succeeded her husband Everett Doerge as state representative
  • George E. Doherty (1920-1987) -- MHS football coach; professional football player; Northwestern State University football coach
  • Robert Franklin "Bob" Grambling (1921-2007), a Shreveport native, became the band director at C.E. Byrd High School in 1968 after twenty years at Minden High School. His bands were known for their consistency, musicianship, and the quality of his students. Grambling himself played in the trombone section of the Shreveport Symphony Orchestra. Prior to his death, Grambling was inducted into the Music Educators Hall of Fame.
  • Patrick Cary Nation, Class of 1937 (1918-2005) -- MHS coach; second principal of the former Lowe Junior High School
  • Wayne Williams, Jr., Class of 1965 -- Former MHS assistant principal; principal at Sibley High School; Webster Parish superintendent since 2003

[edit] Notable alumni

[edit] References

http://www.mindenhigh.com/parent/

http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/browse_school/la/1918/

http://www.mindenmemories.org/images/teachers/teachers.htm

http://www.mindenusa.com/history.htm

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070806/NEWS04/708060302/1063/NEWS04

http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi?

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/school_ov/school_id/34948

http://www.nwlanews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5436&Itemid=71

http://www.latech.edu/specialcollections/collections/m404.shtml