City Dedicates Dragons Lane
By Adam Jones Staff Writer
Published: Sunday, July 6, 2008 at 3:30 a.m.
In honor of the former Industrial/Druid High School, the section of 18th Street near A.L. Freeman Park in Tuscaloosa has been renamed Dragons Lane. James Whitfield, class of 1963, cheers during an unveiling ceremony Saturday. TUSCALOOSA | They came to hail their alma mater and celebrate the installation of the last and only marker that Druid High School once stood at the center of the city's west side.
Approved by the City Council, 18th Street between 30th Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is now Dragons Lane, named after the black high school's mascot.
'Young people will see the sign and ask why it's called Dragons Lane, and they'll be told that in the distant past, here lived the proud, fighting dragons,' said Harrison Taylor, council president and Druid class of 1965.
A couple hundred alumni gathered at Freeman Park next to Dragons Lane to dedicate the new street name. Many alumni were from the city or state, but some came from other states as far away as Illinois.
'Druid High School is no ordinary school because an ordinary school would have given up by now,' said James Whitfield, 1963 graduate and former Dragons football player. 'We are going to continue to always recognize Druid.'
Druid was actually Industrial School from 1935 to 1954, when it was renamed. When the school merged with the white Tuscaloosa High School in 1979, a court order banned the use of either Druid's dragon or Tuscaloosa's black bears. The two moved into Central High School, and the old Druid High was renamed Central West and became a feeder of the city's lone, integrated high school. Central West was razed to make way for a new school.
'All of the things of Druid have been torn down, so we'd thought we'd keep the history alive,' Taylor said.
And 18th Street beside the school was part of that history, said Ulysses Lavender, class of 1967. The community came to play softball on Druid's fields and hold street parties. The area is where generations learned at the guidance of McDonald Hughes, the school's principal, he said.
After signing the alma mater, the crowd released balloons into the air as the street sign on the corner of 30th Avenue was unveiled.
'It will help us keep the dragon spirit alive,' said Eva Harris-Owens, class of 1961 and chair of the Industrial/Druid High School Alumni Association.
