Shades Cahaba Elementary, one of Homewood’s three elementary schools, is known for its outstanding education but not so much for its history.
Shawn Wright, a former student of Shades Cahaba, wrote a book, Shades Cahaba The First 100 Years, and has a website called the Shades Cahaba Oral Project which informs the public about its history. It once was a high school.
Wright informs that some former students from the Zelosofian Academy in Homewood founded Shades Cahaba because they wanted to have another school on the other side of Red Mountain.
Before it was an elementary school, the school had an excellent high school football team, and a girls’ baseball team that won state.
“Thousands of people would come from all over including Leeds, Mountain Brook and Vestavia to watch Shades Cahaba’s football team,” Wright said.
Wright also said that Shades Cahaba was the first school in Birmingham with electricity.
The first graduating class graduated in 1923 with 156 students taught by only five teachers.
By 1932 the school had expanded to 22 teachers and a principal.
In the 1930s, the football and basketball teams had grown and were known as Mountaineers or “Mounties” for short.
“For many years the basketball team played on a dirt court that also served as the gymnasium,” Wright said.
In 1949 Shades Cahaba switched from a high school to an elementary school.
In the 1950s it gained its auditorium and gymnasium. Highway 31 also expanded creating the Homewood 31 tunnel to ensure safe crossings for students during school hours.
During the 1960s Shades Cahaba was the only public school in the area and offered special education classes.
“In the late ’60s and early 70s Shades Cahaba started integrating black students, the students got along with the integrated kids well,” Wright said.
Wright said Homewood had a much better experience integrating black kids, as opposed to other schools at the time like Roseland.
The current Shades Cahaba principal Wendy Story informs more on the meaning of the owl.
“The owl represents wisdom and Shades Cahaba has the owl to represent its students,” Story said.
The owl on the top of the front of Shades Cahaba was removed in the 1930s. It was put back a couple of decades later.
The owl spent many years in county storage until it was sold to a private party and became a garden ornament at a local home.
(Patrick Ingram)
After the owl’s rediscovery, it was restored to its original spot in 1978.
Story said that the original mascot of Shades Cahaba High School was the owl before being changed to Mountaineers.
After the school was a high school, it became a grammar school, and then finally an elementary school.
The grammar school served kindergarten through eighth grade. After Homewood Middle School was founded there was no longer a need for a grammar school, and Shades was turned into an elementary school.
Through all of the transitions, Shades Cahaba has remained a beacon in the community with the owl on the top of the school as a symbol of its long, rich history.
