"Black History is not a month, it's 365 days a year."
- Gussie Lee
Two full decades after a Supreme Court ruling should have plucked racial tensions from the day care havens where children nap and play, Gussie Lee still felt an imbalance at home in Alachua.
It was a whole generation after Brown vs. Board of Education made segregation in schools and facilities illegal, but segregation was still thriving by simple preference in Alachua after it had been shunned by the law. In 1976, parents were still following the silent norm of placing their children in preschools by the color of their skin.
“There wasn’t a black day care center in Alachua,” she said Tuesday, a sad expression on her face from what sounds illogical today. “Not because of the law but because of choice. Even though any child could have gone in 1976 to a white child-care center, it was still not a comfortable enough situation.”
As a social worker for the Board of County Commissioners, Lee had pledged to root out needs in the community and find pioneers to fill them. But since banks were granting most African Americans apologies instead of loans, no black entrepreneur was willing to take a chance in launching a day care for the minority community, Lee said.
Because of her passion for social work and knack to fix what is broken, Lee went on to open the day care center herself that year, which provided for black children but encouraged integration for all. Now Lee’s Preschool and Nursery Center on 166th Place is a symbol of progression for those who can remember why it was built and a home away from home for the 70 children who walk through the door today.
Lee boasts the secrets to caring for children starts with boosting their self-esteem. But what’s more is providing a quality environment for children to learn despite their race.
The early years
Growing up in a farming community just north of Alachua, Lee remembers starting her education in church pews since no preschool existed in Alachua County for blacks in the 1930s.
Her family, like most black and white households in the town of Bland, was a farming family and grew peanuts, tobacco and hay on the land they owned and worked. For an eight-hour workday, Lee remembers being paid little more than $1 when her family sold its crops to white residents.
Her family of eight brothers and sisters thrived on everything they grew on their land – from drinking their own cows’ milk to eating their fertilizer-free vegetables.
When it came time for elementary school, Lee spent from September to May at the only schoolhouse in the community that taught black children, Ogden Elementary.
Ogden Elementary was a two-room schoolhouse built in the early 1900s for African American children in Bland. The school had no electricity or new textbooks and had two teachers that taught all the children from 1st to 6th grade.
“They just never expected the blacks to go further than the 6th grade,” Lee said. “School was just something to keep us busy.”
Lee continued on to attend the Alachua County Training School, a twelve-grade school that taught black children in northwest Alachua County from 1922 until 1956. To a teenage Lee, the constant divide and separation of races was a way of life – a mindset that she says helped her and her siblings to never grow resentful.
“It was just that blacks went here and whites went here, that’s the way it was,” Lee said, her eyes squinting as if searching for the memory. “Was it right? It was right then because that’s the way it was.”
Making a difference
Lee continued her education after high school at Edward Waters College in Jacksonville for cosmetology school, but she soon returned to the Alachua area to delve into social work.
It was then she began work with Alachua County in the 1960s, and it was also a time she watched a somewhat slow progression of integration in her community.
“The majority of the people in my day saw division as ‘that’s the way it was,’” Lee said. “As I grew older and I saw the way it was, it wasn’t the way I wanted it to be.”
Division reached into the conditions at schools, she said, where all children were not getting quality materials. Children were not being taught about the Emancipation Proclamation and often felt no self-worth in their African American history.
“We had the impression whites were the important people,” Lee remembers. “They were the biblical characters, they were the Santa Clauses. When we saw a black character, they were ugly and had no self worth.”
But this began to change in the late 1970s, she said, with the election of Alachua’s first black mayor Gerald Criswell and other black leaders emerging in the community.
Lee herself pioneered programs for low-income families, emergency food and medical services, and a mini-bus system and activities for community seniors.
By the time she acted on the need for a day care center in Alachua for African American children in 1976, Lee had 45 children lined up for the center she ran with help from her family. It wasn’t until 10 years later, though, that Lee saw integration begin to take place at her school.
The school today
Today the 70 children at Lee’s bustling day care are a mixture of minorities and whites, a testament to the progress made in Alachua from Lee’s memories of her segregated Ogden Elementary.
The preschool went through a series of renovations and expansions in the 80s and 90s to better cater to each age group that spans from infants to 12-year-olds. Her 11 employees, including her son Greg, dote on children from when some are dropped off at 6:28 a.m. until working parents pick them up at 6:15 p.m.
Lee’s center has acquired non-profit status as well as accreditation from the National Association for the Education for Young Children. The Early Learning Coalition of Alachua County supports children of lower income families looking to enter Lee’s center by offering an income assessment to fund their tuition.
Lee said some parents may only pay $5 per day to her center while the coalition funds the remaining $20, and others pay 80 cents per day with the coalition supporting the rest.
The children, who simply call her Miss Gussie, sprint from sprawling playgrounds to pint size tables where they dine on two meals per day and snacks between nap times.
On one of her three playgrounds, Lee describes most of the equipment as newly bought through county grants, except one towering jungle gym that still stands from days just after she opened doors.
“We had someone from the community repair and paint it, but people said there was just too much history in it to get rid of it,” Lee said.
After more than 30 years of business, Lee describes her daily role as more of a supervisor to the children begging for her attention on the playgrounds and to routines of setting up meals and putting kids down for naps. But she says her door is always open for parents looking for a safe place to leave their kids, seeing the need just as strong today as it was for the reason she opened doors in 1976.
“If I had not had the experiences I had growing up, I would not be where I am today,” Lee said. “I’ve learned if you love your neighbor as you love yourself then the things we can’t change, we’ll be able to accept them.”