![]() That old iron was one of the few reminders McCray had of her grandmother and the community that helped raise her. “So because I grew up with her, she kept this before me about the importance of education.” “Her mother washed, line dried and ironed laundry, a dollar a basket to send her to high school,” McCray said. But her grandmother, who taught at the school, never let her forget its importance. The all-Black George Washington Carver School for elementary and middle school students closed after desegregation, before McCray was born. “That means we were here before Citrus County was created.” “My family is a pioneer family of Crystal River,” she said. The iconic teachers, the sense of belonging and the moments that lead up to this old photograph of children at the school may be a long-lost memory for some, but it’s ever present for Andrea McCray and her family. So, we tried to find a potbelly stove - a piano. “And then he described to us some of the details that were in there. “We talked to Willie Joyner, who went to the school,” he said. He also met with lifelong Crystal River residents to perfect a diorama. “He printed this building out within a couple of months using an ariel photograph and taking physical measurements of buildings that were here in the 1920s.” “My neighbor is an ex-IBM engineer, Robert Swann, who has a 3-D printer,” Lucas said. So he got to work using his network of neighbors to create a diorama of The George Washington Carver School, also known as “The School.” “I said why don’t we have a quality exhibit, a museum quality exhibit that memorializes everything that’s in here,” he said. He wanted to make sure the people in Crystal River remembered too. “Because I grew up in a very segregated environment and I remember a lot of what that was about.” ![]() “I just said to myself, this is a very familiar story. The Chicago native says what he found at what’s now the George Washington Carver Community Center was something familiar. The water and beautiful scenery are what drew Wilfred Lucas to Citrus County, but the history he discovered on this property is what has kept him there. The exhibit is on display at the George Washington Carver Community Center and it can also be viewed online.The George Washington Carver Community Center now sits on the property where the school once stood.The school closed in 1968 after desegregation ended. ![]() The George Washington Carver school opened in Citrus County in 1923.
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