Public Meeting: Fate of Colbert School

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has announced a public meeting scheduled for Tuesday 22 September from 6:30-9:00 pm at Sojourner Truth Neighborhood Center to discuss the proposed demolition and replacement of Charles Colbert's Phillis Wheatley Elementary School. Previous posts have addressed the Orleans Parish School Board's Master Plan for its schools, as well as Charles Colbert's role in modernizing the city's public school buildings.

FEMA is requesting that participants be prepared to speak out either in support of preservation or demolition. Parties supporting preservation should be able to present a related proposal; parties supporting demolition should present a proposal for the school's commemoration.

To read more about Phillis Wheatley (1753-84), a colonial-era poet, Tulane University Libraries maintain the following resources:

The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Gates, Henry Louis. The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003.

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

To read more about Charles Colbert's architecture, see:

Blodgett, Omer. "Welded Cantilevered Trusses Frame Elevated School." Progressive Architecture 30 (Aug 1958): 138-141.

Colbert, Charles. Idea: The Shaping Force. Metairie, LA: Pendaya Publications, 1987.

New Schools for New Education: A Report from Ann Arbor. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Educational Facilities Laboratories, Inc., 1959. Made available at Texas A & M University here.