PEORIA MAGAZINE February 2023

Carver Community Center’s Drum and Bugle Corps, founded by Eugene Stenson (back row, far left), was a popular activity in Carver’s early decades

She points to The Great Migration, the movement of Black people from southern, largely rural locations to states in the north and west, as coinciding with the rising prominence of Carver Center in the lives of South Side Peorians. As more people arrived from the south, the needs grew “and Carver’s big jumps always seemed to coordinate with those times.” “Anybody you can name who grew up around this town in the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, everybody went there for generations,” Adams said. “Carver was a second home.” Some of those people making their second home at Carver became nationally known. Comedian and actor Richard Pryor got his first stage experience at Carver Center, under the direction of local teaching legend JulietteWhittaker, director of Fine Arts and Drama at Carver.

Other celebrated alums include Charlotte Lewis, a member of the U.S. team that won a silver medal in 1976 in the first-ever Olympic women's basketball competition. Also, Carla McGee, a member of the unbeaten 1996 U.S. Olympics women’s basketball team, was a Carver regular. COMING TO THE RESCUE By 2012, Carver Center had fallen on hard times. The bui lding had been neglected, the programs underutilized. Carver Center was in real jeopardy of closing. Ken Hinton, a former local principal and superintendent of Peoria Public Schools, took on the job of Carver’s executive director for f ive years, overseeing a $1.5 million renovation. He worked the entire time without pay. Hinton, who now lives in Florida, said his decision to help save Carver

Jacobie Proctor, Carver Center CEO

Center harkens back to the original reason it was created. “Back in the 1920s, a group of African American women saw children on the street, both black and white, and they came together out of love,” Hinton said. “Because of the commitment the women of the last century put into Carver Center, out of love of humanity and of young people in the community, they touched the community.” Jacobie Proctor, Carver Center’s chief executive officer, says the center’s near demise was due to a community breakdown. “There used to be a huge emphasis on community here, the houses here, the manufacturing and the jobs here,” she said. When the jobs left, the real estate market declined, and with it the population.

FEBRUARY 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE 31