Campbell High School, Rockwood,TN

CAMPBELL HIGH SCHOOL
1920-1965

Lasting Legacy
Driven To Excellence

It gives me great pleasure to pay honor to one of the greatest high schools in Roane County’s history. I am not a graduate of Campbell High School, but I am an inheritor of its culture and splendor that helped produce so many wonderful minds! As a small child, I can recall the many times Dr. and Mrs. Olinger were invited to dinner at my parent’s home in Harriman. My father, Mr. Fred R. Davis Jr. was the principal at Jamison Elementary School in Harriman. I would sit around the dinner table and hear these two men converse about the progress and their visions for the academic excellence of these two schools. Dr. Olinger was a very forward and direct individual. It appeared to me that he not only had a vision, but knew how to make his visions reality. There in the sound of his voice was a passion and drive to produce the finest and best educated young men and women regardless of the circumstances of segregation. Mrs. Olinger was one of his greatest stakeholders. In her own graceful and fashionable way, she was the strong backbone of her husband’s mission. She could interject quickly into the conversations that added more depth to her husband’s and my father’s conversations. As I grew older, it became very clear that these dinners were focal points driven to embrace the challenges of segregation and to prove that CHS and JES students would excel as high as their counterparts. Dr. Olinger did not wait for the government to change laws. He delivered quality education and accountability to his academic agenda.
Nevertheless, the lack of local and federal government support to integrate never hindered CHS from being well known in communities near and far! CHS was in no doubt a school of P.R.I.D.E. Perseverance, Respect, Integrity, Determined and Educated were represented through the staff to the students. Against the odds, this school never lost its zeal or mission! Every student at CHS felt a sense of belonging and self- worth and was taught that they would have to be twice as good to get half as far in life. The students set forth and did do as well academically and athletically. Therefore, Campbell High School was a school of excellence and mediocrity had no claim. Besides its great leadership, CHS was equipped with master teachers. These teachers knew how to teach with the highest competency, knowledge of content area and compassion, but most of all they loved first and taught second. Now as an adult, I can say that these fine teachers at CHS and Jamison Elementary inspired me to seek the love of teaching for over the past twenty- six years.
So, this is what I mean by being an inheritor of this fine institution. CHS has left an impact on its students and many generations to come! There are no uncertainties that Dr. Olinger’s visions became reality! Dr. Olinger’s commitment, dedication and visions created an institution that rises from the ashes like the Phoenix! We have become the inheritors that celebrate Campbell High School’s historical past, present and future. Dr. Olingers’s drive for excellence and the contributions of many others remain dear in all of our hearts. As its beneficiaries, we will continue the pursuit of excellence in all that we do and serve its beloved community!
Adrienne Davis (Early Intervention Specialist for the Georgia Department of Education)

Comments from CHS graduate, Warren Latham.
From: warren.h.latham@exxonmobil.com
To: cindy.wester@comcast.net
Subject: Re: Campbell High School & Walking Through the Storm web addresses.
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:48:07 +0000
Cynthia,
Thanks for sending these two links. I will have my wife, Cynthia Latham, purchase a copy of your book and send it to me. It is a pleasure to know you, as I do not know many people intelligent enough to write a book.........that includes me.
Tell Stanley that never have I read any document that aroused so many emotions in me as did the Campbell website. I am a Campbell grad uate, but I never had a clue who Mr Campbell was.
This article was most informative. Of course the tears flowed when I saw photos of Mr Olinger, my friends and relatives who have passed on. There was a photo of my favorite uncle Ben Johnson. He was the valedictorian of the class of 51.
I don't know how this website could have been improved.
Well on the other hand......................a few photos of me crowning and kissing the homecoming queens of 1959 and 1960 would have added a little spice. Or a few minutes of footage of me scampering for 65 yard touchdown. I know Stanley is laughing at this, but there really were such photos and such footage. I do not know what happened to them when the school was closed.
More next time,
Warren
Tech Advisor EAP-EPC4B Project
ExxonMobil Production Company
Intels Housing Estates G-93
KM 16 PH/Aba Road
Port Harcourt, NIgeria
234 1 262 1640 Ex 3 7619
713 431 8500 Ex 7619
warren.h.latham@exxonmobil.com
Campbell High School,originally named Rockwood Colored Schools, Campbell High was the only secondary school in the region for African-Americans students.
The building was constructed while Mr. B. J. Campbell was the principal and was eventually named in his honor.

Campbell High Plaque
In 1924 Dr. J. B. Olinger assumed the school's leadership with 6 students in a 2 year program. By 1937, through the effort Dr. and Mrs. Olinger, Campbell High was transformed into the smallest fully accreted 4 year high school in Tennessee. Campbell was closed in 1965 by the Government's ban on racially segregated schools.

In Memorial of Dr. John B. Olinger and Mrs. Willie V.Olinger

John Brownlow Olinger was born in Hazard Kentucky September 4, 1898.
He attended school through the eighth grade in the Perry county system.
His high school and the first years of college were at Kentucky Normal School (Kentucky State University) in Frankfort. He lettered in Football, Baseball and Tennis.
Tuskegee Institute granted a B. S. degree. There he established friendships with Dr. Carver and Benjamin Davis Jr. At Tuskegee he taught and also trained Boy Scout leaders.
He returned to Hazard to teach elementary school that had been founded by his father.
A master’s degree was earned at Fisk University.
Doctorate work was conducted at Columbia University, N. Y.
Olinger took a position as principal at Campbell High school in Rockwood, Tennessee grew it into the smallest accredited high school in Tennessee.
He coached girl and boy athletics. The student alumni recently built a memorial for him.
The state of Tennessee and the federal government made documentary films of his life.
Civic and social involvement took a lot of Olinger’s time. Olinger was Alpha Phi Alpha “Man of The Year”.
He retired from Campbell high and taught at Knoxville College. He died in 1974.