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DocuSign Envelope ID:6FBOD2B6-B8D3-4136-A376-20FDC2D04FC7 <br /> `Colored schools' lessons <br /> resonate today <br /> Free Spirit Freedom moves forward by looking back <br /> 03/04/2015 12:52 PM <br /> HILLSBOROUGH <br /> Growing up in northern Orange County, Hattie Vanhook remembers walking <br /> three miles each way, to and from the two-room, all-black school she attended. <br /> She remembers bitter winter walks, her hands freezing on the way to school. <br /> Her teacher kept a pan of water ready to thaw the students' hands - and <br /> Vanhook remembered that thawing feeling in her fingers. <br /> "It just itched and itched and itched," she said. <br /> At the one-room Sartin school, Melvin Beasley recalled older boys gathering <br /> firewood to fuel the school's only heat source: a pot-bellied stove. <br /> "They were hard days, but they were good days," Beasley said. <br /> Vanhook and Beasley shared their memories during "Rural Schools for Colored <br /> Children - Path to Freedom," a photography and storytelling event hosted by <br /> Free Spirit Freedom at the Central Orange Senior Center, Jan. 31-Feb. 1. <br /> Free Spirit Freedom, a Hillsborough Arts Council initiative, combines history and <br /> the arts to celebrate Orange County's diversity and build understanding. <br /> Thomas Watson and Renee Price co-founded Free Spirit Freedom in 2010. <br /> "You have to remember the past to deal with the present and the future," <br /> Watson said. "The goal is that in open-forum conversations, we can make a <br /> difference." <br />