Newellton High School was a rural public high school in Newellton in northern Tensas Parish in northeastern Louisiana, along the Mississippi River. NHS operated throughout most of the 20th century until its closure in 2006. Located at 400 Verona Street adjacent to Depot Street, the NHS campus is now the site of Newellton Elementary School, which houses pre-kindergarten through the eighth grade.[1]
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Newellton High School was twice renovated. A second structure was completed in 1957 under Superintendent A. E. Swanson.[2] Another major renovation followed during the 1970s, and parts of the preceding facility were torn down and rebuilt. During its existence, NHS first served grades one through eleven. In 1948, the twelfth grade was added throughout Louisiana.
During the 1960s, Newellton High School won two district football championships and was the runner-up at the state competition in its division. Later Mayor Edwin G. Preis (1916-2011) and another businessman, Orrice R. Barnes (1921-1996),[3] were the announcers for the home football games.[4]
In August 1970, NHS was desegregated by federal court order. By the 1970s and 1980s, kindergarten and pre-kindergarten were added.
At the close of the 2005-2006 academic year, there were only seventy-four pupils in the high school grades. On May 18, 2006, the Tensas Parish School Board voted by a four-to-three margin to keep Newellton High School open for at least one additional year. However, parish Superintendent Carol Shipp Johnson had proposed that Newellton grades 9-12 be reassigned to St. Joseph, the parish seat, where they would attend Joseph Moore Davidson High School, which served grades 7-12 and also had a low enrollment. Grades 7-8 attend Tensas High School except for the pupils in those grades in Newellton, who remain with the elementary campus there. The former Davidson High School was named for Joseph Moore Davidson (born 1894),[5] who died in battle shortly before the armistice was signed in 1918 ending World War I.
Ultimately, financial considerations compelled the consolidation of Newellton and Davidson schools into the rearranged Tensas High School at the Davidson campus in St. Joseph, located across the highway from the St. Joseph Baptist Church and near the central office of the school board. Violence broke out at the consolidated school on November 2, 2006, when fourteen male students were arrested by the office of Sheriff Rickey Jones.[6]
Just prior to its closure, Newellton High School lost a popular English teacher in the spring of 2006, when William Randolph "Randy" Achey (born 1952), a native of Virginia and former Alabama resident, died of heart failure. His memorial service was held in the school gymnasium.[7] At that time, two science teachers announced their retirements. Superintendent Carol Johnson said that the closing of Newellton High School would improve educational quality so that Tensas Parish, the smallest in the state in population, might concentrate its efforts on one high school.
Newellton High School had a relatively new facility and the board was reluctant to abandon a structure still in good condition even though enrollment numbers could not sustain continuation. The athletic teams known as "The Bears" drew enthusiastic support from the community for many years. The football teams usually played rivals at Davidson High School or other schools in Tallulah, Mangham, or Delhi.[8] For years, Jack Poe of Newellton wrote the "Our Bears" column in the parish newspaper, the Tensas Gazette.
Citing low enrollments elsewhere, the school board had already closed Waterproof High School, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places,[9] and Lisbon Elementary School, both in the economically depressed town of Waterproof in the southern part of Tensas Parish.
The private school, Tensas Academy, is located in St. Joseph not far from Tensas High School. The academy has drawn from the white population of Newellton as well as other areas of the majority-black parish. Tensas Academy appeared when public schools were desegregated. In May 2010, only three whites out of forty students graduated from Tensas High School. Ten whites graduated from Tensas Academy, and four whites from another private school, the Newellton Christian Academy at 1018 Verona Street.[10]
In 2011, the remaining Newellton Elementary School, which is at least 85 percent African American, enrolls 219 of the approximately 760 public school pupils in Tensas Parish. Every child in the school is eligible for federal Title I assistance.[11]
Allen Ray Bozeman (born 1947) of Dry Prong in Grant Parish, served as the last NHS principal and prepared the school improvement plan for the 2004-2005 academic year submitted to the state department of education.[12]
Alton Browning (1917-1979), vocational and agriculture teacher
Virginia Lee Crossno (born 1934), home economics teacher; later on faculty and administration of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches
Reverend Aubrey Denson Foster (1926-2003), former pastor of the First Baptist Church of Newellton and science teacher at NHS, succeeded William Vosburg as principal in the middle 1970s.
Jerry Don Head (1938-1970), head football coach and civics teacher; later crop-duster killed in air crash
Genell Moore McDonald Owen (1914-1972), English teacher
Hardy "Buddy" Palmer (born 1936), football coach and mathematics teacher
Wallace Ewing Prather (1924-2002) served as the Newellton principal during the 1950s and 1960s.
George H. "Tinker" Prince (1924-1992), business teacher
Reverend Donald Lee Thornton, Sr. (born 1936), a native of Tunica, Mississippi, graduate of Mississippi College in Clinton, former pastor of the Flowers Landing Baptist Church in Newellton, mathematics and chemistry teacher and coach at NHS from 1958-1978, resident of West Monroe and pastor in Waverly in Madison Parish. Thornton's wife, the former Beatrice Walters, graduated from NHS in 1959, and their son, Donald, Jr. (born 1960), graduated in 1978.
William Edward "Bill" Vosburg (born October 13, 1940), a native of New Roads, the seat of Pointe Coupee Parish, served as the NHS principal during the early years of racial transition. Vosburg later entered business in Ruston, the seat of Lincoln Parish in north Louisiana. The superintendent at the time, Charles Ed Thompson (1932–1993), a Tensas Parish native, later accepted a position with the Louisiana Department of Education in Baton Rouge under state Superintendent Louis J. Michot.