By BETH THOMAS
Lifestyles Editor
What started out as a mission in 1951 has led to a rapidly growing parish, an award-winning school and a large number of black catholics in Leflore County.
This weekend, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church and school will hold its 61st homecoming and school reunion. Any student who attended the school or parish is invited to attend the three-day event that will include a banquet ball, fall festival and tour of downtown Greenwood along with other activities.
“A lot of students passed through these doors,” said Dianne Wilson Jones, St. Francis first-grade teacher and former student. “Probably more than anyone realizes.”
Jones attended kindergarten through eighth grade at the school from 1957 to 1966. She then transferred to a public high school in Greenwood.
At the time, Jones’ parents were Baptist, but they had no reservations about sending their children to a Catholic school.
“Our parents sent us there because they felt we could get a good education at St. Francis. They also knew we’d be disciplined, and we were,” Jones said with a laugh. She recalled the strictness of the nuns who served as her teachers. “They made sure we behaved,” she said.
When Jones and some of her classmates transferred to a public high school, they realized how good an education they had received from St. Francis.
“We knew the answers to the questions teachers would ask, but we would sit back and be quiet because we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves. We had already learned the material they were just now learning,” she said.
During her time at St. Francis School, Jones became a Catholic. She took her first commitment when she was in the fourth grade. Her family soon followed. “None of the children who started at St.Francis were Catholic, but we all became Catholic,” Jones said. “And our parents did, too.”
Consequently, this is how the church came to gain most of its members.
St. Francis School has pretty humble beginnings.
Started in 1951 by the third order sisters of St. Joseph in Garfield Heights, Ohio, the school was a ministry and source of education primarily geared towards poor families in Greenwood. The school spent its early days housed together with the parish and convent in the old Blue Moon Cafe, a former juke joint right outside the Greenwood city limits.
“A lot went on in one building, but it really wasn’t cramped or congested,” said Georgette Griffin, a former student and one of the first and only graduates of St. Francis High School in 1963.
When St. Francis School opened on Sept. 4, 1951, it had 21 students in grades kindergarten through second grade. Within two weeks, enrollment increased to 55.
Tuition at the time was $5 per month.
Although the classes were small, Griffin recalls having lots of choices for extracurricular activities.
“We had Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, choir, glee club, sports and an award-winning drum and bugle corps among lots of other things,” Griffin said.
St. Francis was even responsible for introducing soccer to Greenwood. “But since we didn’t have a soccer field in Greenwood, students had to travel to Jackson if they wanted to compete in any games,” Griffin said.
Griffin recalled that students started wearing uniforms when she was in the third grade.
“They were hand-me-downs from up North,” she said of the plaid skirts for girls and coats and ties for boys. “In high school, we made their own uniforms,” she said.
St. Francis had a high school from 1963 through 1965, graduating 17 students over the course of three years. It later dropped the high school due to not having enough students.
St. Francis School is now pre-K through sixth grade elementary school. Its motto is “creating diamonds in the Delta.”
For more information on the school, call the main office at 453-9511 or visit www.stfrancisassisi-.com.
nContact Beth Thomas at 581-7233 or bthomas@gwcommonwealth.com.
