Macon woman opened ‘exceptionally great program’ for Black students amid segregation

When Lillie Gantt-Evans was growing up in a segregated Macon, she attended L.H. Williams Elementary School in Pleasant Hill.

The books were old and inadequate, and she said they really didn’t have the resources they deserved.

“It was just kind of hard. We had to accept that. We didn’t have any other choices,” Gantt-Evans said. “After I saw all that, it was just in my mind to just try to do better, better for me and for my pupils.”

After starting a job as a nurse at Robins Air Force Base, Gantt-Evans opened Gantt’s Preschool with around 12 kids in Unionville in 1966, when she was 26 years old. She wanted to give parents the option to send their children to preschool and kindergarten, she said. She opened M.A. Evans Academy, named after her daughter, shortly after in 1968.

“I’ve been here 54 years. I never took a dime from the government. They never gave me a dime. The school been standing, and we have approximately 250 kids. So, I think God has blessed us and we have done well,” she said. “I just seen a need for, I’ll just be frank with you, for the Black kids. I didn’t want them to just be passed along.”

Bibb County Schools were not fully integrated until 1970. Although Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 made it illegal for public schools to be segregated, Bibb County Schools did not start integrating until 1963 when Bert Bivins became the first Black man to attend an all-white public school. In February 1970, Bibb County Schools were forced to fully integrate by a court order, and the school system opened for its first full year as integrated schools in August 1970, according to The Telegraph archives.

‘It was prejudice.’

Although Gantt-Evans had received approval from the state of Georgia to open her preschool in 1966, the City of Macon refused to give her a business license.

“I was really the only Black that was trying to open a school, and that’s why they didn’t want me to open the school. It was prejudice,” she said. “It hurt me, and I cried and cried… I had met all the requirements that they asked me to meet in order to open so they didn’t give me no kind of excuse why they turned it down.”

Gantt-Evans was acquainted with William P. Randall Sr., who was an active member in the Civil Rights Movement in Macon and one of the key negotiators for desegregation. Randall sent her to Buck Melton, who served as the city attorney under former Mayor Ed Wilson and served as the mayor of Macon himself.

Melton made sure she was able to open her school, she said. She hired retired teachers and principals from the Bibb County School system to staff the school and held fundraisers to help finance the school on top of students’ tuition, she said.

After Dorothy Johnson retired from teaching in Bibb County Schools, she went to work at M.A. Evans teaching first grade.

“My mother can teach this floor how to read if she had to. She is just an extraordinary phonics person,” said Cheryl Johnson Knight, Johnson’s daughter. “Miss Evans has an exceptionally great program at her school.”

However, Gantt-Evans ran into another problem when the Board of Education in Bibb County refused to accept her kids into its schools, she said.

“My children were very smart, but they didn’t want to accept them,” she said

However, the state Board of Education required Bibb County Schools to accept her children as long as they could pass the proper tests, and she hasn’t had an issue moving forward.

“The public school, they let us feed right into them where they supposed to be, and I never have had anyone to call me back to tell me my children, you know, they couldn’t succeed,” she said.

Giving every child a chance

M.A. Evans Academy has had children grow up to be doctors and engineers, Gantt-Evans said, and in her school, she said she made sure that if children needed extra help, they received it.

“I felt like I can give our children what they really need, and that’s important. I didn’t want to pass the children along,” she said. “I prefer sending on a child that know than to send a child on that don’t know because he’ll be struggling the rest of his life.”

The deadline for students’ birthdays to enter the school is Dec. 31 rather than Sept. 1 like in Bibb County Schools. Gantt-Evans said this allows children, who would have to wait another year to start school in the public school system, to start early.

“You got to get a good background in the beginning, like preschool and kindergarten and first grade. If you miss out on that, you’re kind of way behind,” she said. “That’s why I really started that school because I really wanted them to get off the ground.”

Although Gantt-Evans had to fight to open her school, she is glad she was able to open it and run it successfully for 54 years.

“I’m proud that I’ve been able to succeed and carry the student on as well as I have, and I thank the parents and the neighbors for what they have helped us with,” she said.