News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
IMPACT Cookeville will partner with Tennessee Tech Archives to help preserve multicultural history in the community.
IMPACT member Jasen Knight said the process will begin with archiving items relating to the former Darwin High School.
“I went to the library and found three yearbooks and two pamphlets about the colored fair, and that’s all they had on file,” Knight said. “We’re going to try and archive some of the local black history. To start with, we’re going to try and collect all the artifacts from Darwin High School – pictures, yearbooks, anything that’s related to Darwin High School. We’re going to scan them digitally and have them at Tennessee Tech’s campus to archive permanently.”
Knight discussed the initiative during a special town hall session at the Putnam County Courthouse Saturday. He said archiving items from Darwin High School will only be the start of preserving the community’s overall multicultural heritage.
“The fear is that if we don’t do it now, then it won’t get done and the stories will be lost,” Knight said. “Look out for emails and Facebook communications on that. That will be the beginning of multiple things. We want to expand to many different cultures and many different events. We’ll also be archiving IMPACT things and the NAACP as well.”
Darwin Schools began as a middle school in Cookeville during the late 1920s before eventually adding the high school in 1936. The schools burned in 1963 just prior to school desegregation across the United States.
Knight said an event will likely take place Saturday, March 30 to allow the public to bring items to archive. Details on the event have not been released.
