Thomasville Heights Elementary School Elimination and Mixed Use Development

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Thomasville Heights Elementary. is Scheduled for Elimination

It was constructed in the 1960’s in fufilment of an “Urban Renewal”
Project that primarily benefited white contracting firms.
The Federal government contributed The Federal
Prison’s extensive Peach Orchards and farm fields. However
Thomasville had only recently been annexed by (then white controlled)
Atlanta . The bus stopped at the Federal prison and
a walk of a mile or two was required to reach the black community which was semi-rural with scattered local homes constructed by their
owners or individual's contractors. The exception was a black development called Norwood Manor and a couple of others.

To sell the locals on the Urban Renewal Project and flow of Federal
funds to white business, the advantages offered included not only an
up to date elementary school, but a park, recreational facilities a
library, paved roads off the main highway, waterlines, and all the other things a city then supposedly provided without “urban renewal” funds- at least for white communities.

But the library was a tiny pre-fab, the recreation facility minimal.
The new homes were prefabs that could be erected in a single day.
Indeed the black Norwood manor contractor did a far better job whereas
the much better rewarded white contractor built as if he could not
bear to build anything as good for blacks as for whites- especially if
he could pocket the difference. The Town house/Apartments were of
minimal size and had tiny yards with few amenities. Most of the former
Peach Orchards and Cabbage fields remain vacant to his day
( although the trees were almost immediately cut down).

A few hundred yards north east of Forest Cove is a now fenced apartment complex (now called Park Vista) that would appear to be more modern and is certainly more spacious and better built .But it is older than Forest Cove and was built by whites for whites . Indeed a few blocks east of McDonough Blvd. are two formerly segregated (white) elementary schools Guice and Benteen. that any transferees from Thomasville Heights School would have to go less far to reach than Slater (near the Wendy's Drive Thru Sleeper shooting site).

More students might have been available for Thomasville Heights but the same Urban Renewal Project included a walled in public housing Project that was since torn down at McDonough Blvd. and Moreland. The old existing segregated (black) elementary school in Thomasville was torn down and replaced by the school that is now to be eliminated.

However a mile or so east at Custer and Moreland (US42)
a Mixed Use Development is scheduled for Construction so that the Schools might find the need is not for elimination but expansion.