DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Camp County, there's a story that starts in 1865 — and friend, that is one heck of a place to start. That's the year black Freedmen began the community of Center Point.
Not handed to them. Not built for them. Begun by them.
Right there, that's your whole story, except it just keeps going. In 1873, the Center Point Baptist Church was organized — a congregation taking root, giving the community a center and a name to gather around. Then 1889 rolls in, and somebody decided that a church wasn't enough — you needed an institution that could put land in people's hands.
That was the Industrial Union, chartered that year with a mission to aid settlers in buying farms and building homes. Now here's where it gets genuinely impressive. That Union didn't just write checks and shake hands.
It managed — cooperatively, together — a brick kiln, a sawmill, and a cotton gin. Three operations, one community, running them all. Then comes the school, and the school is something else entirely.
Under the leadership of Mr. and Mrs. L.B. Cash, the first principals, Center Point School grew into an important vocational facility on a fourteen-acre campus.
And those structures standing on that campus? Students erected most of them. Built the very place where they were learning to build.
There was a cooperative boarding plan, too — the community looking after its own young people the same way it looked after everything else. The school ran and taught and stood until 1950, when it was consolidated with Pittsburg. But what those Freedmen started in 1865 — the church, the union, the kiln and the mill and the gin, the school and the hands that built it — all of that had already done what it set out to do.
What the marker says
In 1865 black Freedmen began this community. The Center Point Baptist Church was organized in 1873. The Industrial Union was chartered in 1889 to aid settlers in buying farms and building homes. A cooperative managed a brick kiln, sawmill and cotton gin. Under the leadership of Mr. and Mrs. L.B. Cash, the first principals, Center Point School became an important vocational facility. Students erected most of the structures on the 14-acre campus and there was a cooperative boarding plan. The school was consolidated with Pittsburg in 1950. (1979)