Rose Hill is a historically black community in northeast Porterdale that was originally developed in the early 1900s as a segregated residential community for mill workers. The school was built in 1937 by the Bibb Manufacturing Company and also served as a church and a community gathering place. Rose Hill School and church was the only African American educational establishment in Porterdale while the mill was in operation. The building has remained largely unchanged since construction and reflects a unique era of development in a distinctive mill community.
Porterdale Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
The churchyard of Mountain Creek A. M. E. is located in an isolated section of northern Sumter County and reached by a road of deep red clay, perched atop a hill. Named for a tributary of the Flint River, Mountain Creek may be a Freedmen’s congregation, but its history is a bit obscure, as is often the case with the historic Black churches I document. This little building is what beckoned me here in the first place, and it has proven to be as enigmatic as the congregation itself. When I saw the piano [below], I was sure this was the original church, but as I explored the property and learned of an Old Mountain Creek Cemetery, that quickly gave way to a different narrative.
The building is nearing collapse, and I now believe it was a schoolhouse, associated with Mountain Creek A. M. E.
The historic cemetery is full of stenciled headstones, and there are five gravesites painted a shade of bright blue, which some would call haint blue. They are the first of this color that I’ve encountered. [There is also an Old Mountain Creek A. M. E. Cemetery listed on Findagrave, which suggests the congregation was established elsewhere and later moved here. The earliest identified burial in that cemetery is 1902].
An historic church building serves the congregation today, and the front addition, known as the Dr. Russell Thomas and Sister Margarot Camp Thomas Fellowship Hall, was added in 1990.
The church is a typical late-19th/early-20th century form, with separate front doors for women and men.
Professor Thomas Jefferson Elder (1869-1946) came to Sandersville around 1889, at the invitation of a local minister, for the purpose of improving educational opportunities for Sandersville’s Black children. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form, he was “the one man who had meant most to the educational, social and spiritual advancement of the colored people of the county for almost 60 years.”
Newspaper photos of Professor Thomas Jefferson Elder and Lillian Phinizy Elder, circa 1940s. Public Domain images accessed via Findagrave. No known restrictions.
A brochure from the City of Sandersville notes that Thomas Jefferson Elder was born and raised in Oconee County. His father was Blant Elder, a planter, and his mother was Sarah A. Love. He barely knew his mother as she lived in the home of her employer. A white man named John Meeks took care of Elder and his brother after their mother died. They attended the Knox Institute in Athens and graduated from Atlanta University. He taught for two years in Athens, where he met his wife, Lillian Phinizy Elder (1868-1943), a graduate of Spelman Seminary and fellow teacher. He furthered his education at Morgan Park Academy and Cook County Normal in Chicago, and Hampton Institute in Virginia.
In 1889, Elder established “Sandersville’s first Negro school” in the Springfield Baptist Church, with 25 students. Two years later, he purchased a nearby lot and built a two-room school, which became the Sandersville High and Industrial School. It was the first school in this part of the state to include manual training in its curriculum and in 1917 a domestic science building was constructed with the help of the Rosenwald Fund. In 1928, due largely to the fundraising efforts of Professor Elder, the present structure was built by the Rosenwald Fund and renamed the Thomas J. Elder High and Industrial School in his honor. It is in the H-Form popular among Rosenwald schools and was considered one of the finest and largest Black schools in Middle Georgia at the time. As to his administrative skill, his obituary noted: During his superintendency of the school, he maintained rigid discipline. A student breaking a window replaced it at his own expense, often working after hours to earn the money. Desks in the school, some of them over 40 years old, were unmarred by carving and whittling. Elder explained that offenders were made either to sand down and varnish the desk top or to buy a new one.
Professor Elder and his wife are buried in front of the school. An article in the 13 June 1946 edition of the Sandersville Progress recounts the following: Nearly 20 years ago, standing in the city square, the late George Warthen and the late C. B. Chapman made an agreement. “When Elder died,” said Mr. Warthen, “if one or the other of us is living he will see that Elder has white pall bearers. Agreed?” “Agreed,” said Mr. Chapman. G.S. Chapman overheard the conversation; it was he who carried out the agreement for his father.
The school became an elementary school in 1960, when a new Black high school was built, and continued in that capacity until closing in 1980. It now serves as the T. J. Elder Community Center.
The campus of the old Hubbard Elementary and High School, with modern structures built during the era of Equalization Schools, is now a public facility and park known as the W. M. Hubbard Complex. After desegregation, the school became Hubbard Middle School, but like most mid-century school buildings, mold, asbestos, and related issues likely led to its eventual abandonment.
Some buildings have been razed and those remaining, including the gymnasium, have been restored and are now used by groups such as the Boys and Girls Clubs.
While serving as President of the State Teachers and Agricultural College for Negroes, W. M. Hubbard built this Colonial Revival residence for his family. [It’s often referred to simply as the W. M. Hubbard House]. It is still owned by his descendants but at their discretion is not included in the National Register of Historic Places.
Back side of the Women’s Dormitory. This is the side that faces Georgia Highway 83/Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive.
The State Teachers and Agricultural College for Negroes (STAC) was established by William Merida Hubbard (1865-1941) in 1902 as the Forsyth Normal and Industrial School, and was one of three Black colleges added to the University System of Georgia in 1932. The Women’s Dormitory and the Teacher’s Cottage are the only two public buildings associated with the school still extant and have been restored. Besides being home to Monroe County Cooperative Extension offices, the dormitory is also home to the Hubbard Museum and Cultural Center.
W. M. Hubbard was born in Wilkinson County to Edinborough and Betsy Hubbard, who had been enslaved in Virginia until Emancipation. He is likely one of the most important figures in Georgia’s African-American history that you’ve never heard of and I hope more people learn his story. He worked his way through the Ballard Normal School in Macon and then attended Fiske University and Cornell University. While getting his education, he taught in Irwinton, Monroe County, and Jacksonville, Florida. After graduation from Cornell, he spent four years in Cuthbert before finally settling in Forsyth around the turn of the century. Since there was no accredited local Black school at the time, Hubbard worked for a few years as a professional photographer. According to the Hubbard Alumni Association: In 1900 William Merida Hubbard opened a school with seven students in the Kynette Methodist Church in the city of Forsyth. Like many schools in the Jim Crow South, churches presented the only option for educating black children. He opened this school at a time when there was little interest and minimal financial support for African American public education in Georgia. Undaunted by this challenge, William Hubbard cultivated partnerships with the white community in Forsyth. In 1902, Hubbard and five white men from Forsyth successfully petitioned the Superior Court of Monroe County to incorporate the Forsyth Normal and Industrial School with one small building on ten acres of land.
The Normal School added 10th and 11th grades in 1917, receiving full accreditation, and was the first Black vocational school in Georgia. It became a junior college in 1927 but sadly, several buildings were lost to fire soon thereafter. Undaunted, Hubbard oversaw the building of newer facilities, including the dormitory and teacher’s cottage. It became the STAC in 1931. The school merged with Fort Valley State College in 1938 and Mr. Hubbard finished his career there. The following year, the campus became Forsyth’s first Black high school, known as the Hubbard Training Center. William’s son, Samuel Hubbard, oversaw its evolution into the Hubbard Elementary and High School and served as its principal until desegregation in 1970.
It speaks volumes of Hubbard’s legacy that Governor Eugene Talmadge, an avowed racist, praised the man and his accomplishment at his memorial service in 1941.
This house was built for teachers at the State Teachers and Agricultural College for Negroes between 1929-1930. It’s one of two contributing properties of the school that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is an important resource. It still serves an educational purpose, as the Monroe County Workforce Development Center.
Cherry Grove Baptist Church, like multitudes of historic African-American congregations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was as committed to the education of its children as it was to catering to the spiritual needs of its community. They built this little one-room schoolhouse circa 1910 for that purpose. In the Jim Crow era, there was little to no emphasis placed on the literacy of Black children by the state, so that responsibility was borne by churches. Philanthropic organizations such as the the Rosenwald Fund began building schools for these under-served communities in 1912, but Cherry Grove predates that time and is therefore an important link to a part of our history that is often overlooked.
Recent historical resource surveys have identified 15 of these church-supported schoolhouses in Georgia, and most can be considered highly endangered resources. They may have once numbered in the hundreds, so their loss is significant, not only to the Black community but to the historical record as well.
The Cherry Grove School, with one teacher overseeing grades 1-7, closed in 1956. This was an effect of widespread consolidation which saw the state building better Black schools, known as Equalization Schools, in an effort to delay the desegregation mandated by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The school deteriorated with the passage of time, and was as endangered as all the other Black schoolhouses in Georgia. Thanks to the work of Barrett Hanson and the Friends of Cherry Grove Schoolhouse, this special place has been given a new lease on life and will hopefully serve a new educational purpose to coming generations. Their efforts saw the school placed on the National Register of Historic Places and were recognized earlier this year with the prestigious Marguerite Williams Award, given by the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation for the project that made the greatest impact on historic preservation in Georgia.
This school, which served Vienna’s African-American community before desegregation, was built in part with funds provided by the Rosenwald Fund and utilized it “Six Teacher Community School Plan”. It was built by Governor George Busbee’s father, who also built the nearby Lilly School. N. B. Lavender was the first principal.
The National Register of Historic Places listing for the school is a bit confusing, as it identifies this as the County Training School, noting the vocational focus of many schools for African-Americans at the time. However, the original cornerstone for the school identifies it as the Vienna Industrial & High School. An equalization school was built adjacent to the property in 1959, and the campus included all of the earlier Rosenwald structures.
A shop building for vocational activities was built near the schoolhouse, also in 1926. A second shop building (not pictured) was built in 1959 to the right of the schoolhouse.
A food processing/canning plant was attached to the old shop building at a later date..
Members of the Class of 1945 are remembered on the steps of the old shop building, including: R. Lilly; L. Chaney; R. Chaney; A. Graham; F. Smith; L. Smith; E. Bell; B. Godwin; H. Reece; G. Fudge; O. Barnes; G. Eunice; C. Wallace; and M. Edwards.
Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church, built 1920
A sign on this church dates the congregation to 1878, but further research suggests that it was established in the 1860s, likely during the Civil War. In its listing for the National Register of Historic Places, Brother George Donald said that Ebenezer African Methodist Episcopal Church was “founded by African Americans who would slip off into the woods to pray in secret” and that the church began as “brush arbor” at Piney Grove, located southwest of Whigham. The 1878 date is likely when the congregation adopted the tenets of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
This lot was purchased from J. T. Harrell for $20 in 1878 and the first trustees were Brothers Thomas Young, Georgie Donald, Fortune Liphnidge, George Shackleford, and Even Swicord. They built a log church here, which served until it burned in 1920. The present church dates to that time. It served the congregation until the 1980s, when deterioration and dwindling membership saw worship move into the schoolhouse. Presently, the structure is stable but in serious need of further renovation.
Ebenezer School, Built circa 1930
Not unlike other Black congregations of the era, Ebenezer saw the importance of education and built this one-room schoolhouse to serve their community circa 1930.
A subscriber to Vanishing Georgia writes: Whigham had a Black school built in the 1950s. It was/is located only a couple of blocks from Whigham High School. It’s on Google Street View, but I don’t know if it’s still standing. Based on state statistics and what I’ve gleaned from Cairo Messenger archives, I’d put Ebenezer’s closure around 1950. One of my projects has been recovering names of Black schools before the earliest cumulative list of 1957.
I think I have all of Grady County’s segregated schools from the 1951-52 school year, when it reported to the state it had 12 Black schools. In 1950, however, Grady reported 21 schools, 13 of them one-teacher. Ebenezer would have been too nice to close before then, especially since it had an actual building that wasn’t the chapel itself. The Black Whigham school opened in 1956. Total integration was completed in 1970 and it doesn’t look like it was used after that, based on educational directories.
Ebenezer was nice in comparison to many of the other county schools for Black children and is an amazing survivor.
Vanishing Georgia: Photographs by Brian Brown 