Kirkwood School: The Naming Cornerstone

Lyrics

[Intro]

Oh, bell tower, you old sentinel,
standing there since the 1880s,
Joseph Kirkwood's name etched in your wood.

[Verse 1]
I remember your clang at eight in the morning,
December 1895, frost on the fields,
children running with tin pails of cornbread and molasses,
huddling by the potbelly stove,
its wood smoke curling like a promise.
You rang for lessons in that one-room house,
slate boards scratching with chalk,
the oak tree outside watching over the yard.

[Chorus]
Bell tower, you named us,
Kirkwood School, cornerstone of this place,
through annexation in 1922,
when Atlanta swallowed us whole.
You stood unsparing,
witness to the divided days,
white faces only in your shadow,
Black children sent elsewhere,
underfunded halls echoing their absence.

[Verse 2]
Joseph Kirkwood, whoever you were,
your legacy in these rafters,
the bell buried under the oak, they say,
a time capsule of student whispers.
In the segregated decades,
you anchored meetings in the yard,
over a hundred voices in October 1922,
debating the city's grasp.
Cold mornings at forty degrees,
smell of damp earth after rain.

[Bridge]

Now, in the quiet,
I address you, old tower,
intimate as a loved one's ear,
what stories do you hold of the missing ones?
The Black teachers, the mothers who mended your steps,
erased from the ledgers.

[Verse 3]
From rural paths to urban pulse,
you remained, morally unsparing,
a quiet joke in your steadfast ring,
calling us back to what was built here.

[Outro]

Bell tower, goodnight,
your name still rings in these streets.