LANETT — At Monday’s gathering at the Lanett Senior Center, an IT specialist who today lives in Rochester, New York spoke about having grown up in the local area and the impact it had on his life. Reginald Wright was raised in the Jackson Heights neighborhood and graduated from Lanett High in 1983. As a special presentation during Black History Month, Wright talked about the important influence family members and his teachers had on him in his youth. Especially important to him were adults in the community who had graduated from Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) such as Alabama State, Tuskegee, Alabama A&M and Morehouse.

“I can remember being in Joe Greenwood’s barber shop on a Saturday afternoon and talking with Mr. R.B. Dallas,” Wright said. “He told me how he had went to Alabama State in the 1930s and was involved in starting Lanier High in Lanett.”

At that time, the Chambers County Training School in LaFayette was the only school in Chambers County where Black students could earn a high school diploma. Having a new school meant getting the land and constructing a building. The Darden family donated a site that would be annexed into the city and what became Lanier High was built. A school coming to the area is what got water and sewer lines in Jackson Heights for the first time.

Dallas would become the first principal at Lanier High. He was a deacon at Ebenezer Baptist Church and a lecturer for the Bowen East District at the time. He was widely known in the local area as “Prof” Dallas. That was short for Professor and showed the respect he had as a college-educated…