Tag Archives: Historic Black Schools

Howard Academy & Freedmen’s Courthouse, Circa 1870, Midville

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I tentatively identified this as the Midville Grammar School. It has most recently been used as the Midville Voting Precinct and is what appears to be a good state of preservation, at least outwardly.

Floyd Ellis Cross shares the amazing history of the building: This Academic building was completed about 1870 by Union General Howard of the Freedman’s Bureau for a school for newly freed Negroes. The ground floor was established for a grammar school for ALL races; 2nd floor was for a Freedman’s Court using federal resources and primarily paid negro masons and laborers to construct. When the Federal troops were withdrawn from Georgia in about 1876, the White Masonic community united to expel blacks from the Howard Academy and, established The Midville Grammar H.S. on the ground floor and seized the 2nd floor for use as the White Masonic Lodge# 541. Many years later I discovered stored KKK ‘uniforms’ in a closeted trunk in the facility meeting room.

New Bethel School, Veazey

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I’ve only been able to determine that this was a schoolhouse associated with New Bethel A. M. E. Church at Leslie Mill. The style indicates early 20th century construction. It’s a significant historical school, from a time when churches set the standard for the education of African-American children.

Dorchester Academy Boys’ Dormitory, 1934, Midway

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Dorchester Academy was founded as a primary school for African-American children by the American Missionary Association after the Civil War. The dormitory, designed by Norwegian-born architect George Awsumb in 1934 to replace an 1890s structure lost to fire in 1932, is all that remains of a once-larger campus. After the school closed in 1940, demolition of the campus took place. The boys’ dormitory became the community center and still serves that purpose.

During the Civil Rights Movement it was the primary site of the Citizenship Education Program (CEP) (1961-70), an important initiative of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).  This was seen as the basis for the highly successful Voter Education Project (VEP). One of the prime boosters of the CEP was Septima Poinsette Clark, a Charleston school teacher referred to as the “Queen Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”. The work of this and other so-called “citizenship schools” trained over 700 teachers and registered 50,000 voters by 1963.

Workshops were often held at the site with numerous civil rights icons in attendance, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrew Young, Wyatt Walker, and Dorothy Cotton.

National Historic Landmark + National Register of Historic Places

Willow Hill Elementary School, 1954, Bulloch County

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Willow Hill Elementary School, under a clear blue sky with scattered clouds, featuring multiple windows and a paved area in front.

A historic marker placed on 30 August 2014 reads: Willow Hill School was established in 1874 during Reconstruction as one of the first schools for African Americans in Bulloch County.  It was privately supported until being sold to the local Board of Education in 1920. In 1954 the county built a new “equalization” school as part of a statewide strategy to resist federally mandated integration.  These schools addressed blatant geographic and racial disparities in education with new, modern – but still segregated – facilities and improved curricula. Willow Hill was one of five such African-American schools in Bulloch County and consolidated several older rural schools: Bennett Grove, Scarboro Grove, Rehovia, Gays Grove, Free Chapel, and Johnson Grove.  The school closed in 1969 as part of the county’s desegregation plan, and the students and faculty sent elsewhere.  It reopened as an integrated intermediate school in 1971 with new faculty.

 

Praise House, Bolden

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Located near Eulonia in the Bolden community [sometimes referred to as Briar Patch], this vernacular landmark was built by Joseph Palmer in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Throughout its history it has served as a community center and schoolhouse but is perhaps best known as a praise house.

The praise house is officially known as the Bolden Home Lodge. Its shaded yard is still a popular gathering place in this tiny community and has long been associated with the world-famous McIntosh County Shouters.

George Washington Carver School, 1939, Keller

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An historical marker notes: On these grounds in 1939, Henry Ford built a school to serve the educational needs of the African-American children of lower Bryan County. Professor Herman Cooper was appointed as the Principal when the school opened later that year, originally with grades one through six. Ford named the school in honor of the prominent African-American educator and agriculturist from Tuskegee Institute, Dr. George Washington Carver. In March 1940 Dr. Carver attended the dedication ceremonies here for the new school named in his honor.

A gymnasium located at the back of the property appears to be all that remains of the historic campus.