UNC-TV:A Colored School

One of the first students to graduate in 1949 in the Second Ward gym that still stands as an icon of a forgotten time, Vermelle has enjoyed a busy and productive life. After graduating from high school, Vermelle entered Shaw University, majoring in elementary education, and upon receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, signed up for graduate classes at New York University. Following in her father's education footsteps, she taught first grade at Marie G. School, a school for Blacks, for 17 years, and after desegregation she taught first grade at Pineville Elementary School until 1985. Although she and her husband had no children, she fulfilled her life by loving the children she taught.

Her father, the French teacher at Second Ward, also taught her the art of collecting pictures and films. In fact, it was this hobby that landed her the film made at Second Ward High School that became the basis of A Colored School.

"One of my instructors at Second Ward retired, and her son donated it to me," she remembers.

For Vermelle, the gift started a lifetime of actively preserving the history she had known. She began the Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation, chartered in 1980, and began to collect artifacts from Second Ward High School and the neighborhood that surrounded it. Soon after she established the Foundation, the city of Charlotte donated a marker for the land on which Second Ward High School originally stood. She worked at revitalizing the Second Ward neighborhood and bought a small house to turn into a small museum. In addition to performing duties as director of the museum and the historian for the foundation, Vermelle also organizes the annual Second Ward High School reunion, an event in August that typically draws at least 200 alumni to a basketball games, jazz and comedy hour and dance.

"Second Ward was a home away from home," Vermelle says. "Everybody was made to feel a part of it, and we were taught self-respect."

Her favorite memories were being elected homecoming queen in 1948 and 1949 and watching the basketball games between fierce rivals Second Ward and West Charlotte High. Today she entertains her brother and nephew and functions as an advocate with the City Council to salvage the Second Ward gym, the only remaining structure of the original high school.