As a primary grader in 1954, Ralph James was one of many final college students to attend the St. George Colored School in higher Dorchester County. Six a long time later, he has returned to steer a re-opening of the varsity as a kids’s museum to coach the following era in regards to the city’s Black enterprise district throughout the interval of racial segregation.
“This history speaks volumes to what our people did with so little then,” mentioned James, chairman of the seven-member St. George Rosenwald School board of administrators. After the neighborhood raised $4 million in grants and contributions to revive the old fashioned, the renovated St. George Rosenwald School museum is predicted to open early subsequent yr, he mentioned.
Nearly a century in the past throughout segregation, the St. George Colored School was certainly one of 414 “Rosenwald schools” inbuilt South Carolina to coach Black kids in rural communities. It was certainly one of two faculties in Dorchester County in a nationwide community of greater than 5,000 Rosenwald faculties impressed by educator Booker T. Washington and Sears and Roebuck president Julius Rosenwald. At least 14 Rosenwald faculties had been inbuilt Charleston County within the Twenties stretching from Wadmalaw Island to Lincolnville to McClellanville, in line with data from the S.C. Department of Archives and History.
This month, James and members of the nonprofit group plan to satisfy with the National Park Service with hopes the renovated college might be part of a multi-state nationwide park celebrating Rosenwald’s legacy. He added a gathering can be deliberate this month with the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina in Charleston to get recommendation on find out how to acknowledge Rosenwald, the son of German Jewish immigrants born in Illinois in 1862.
The Rosenwald college in St. George opened in 1925. It closed in 1954 as South Carolina constructed new faculties for black kids to stall college integration. In that yr, James and his schoolmates entered a brand new Williams Memorial High School in St. George, named for the Rev. S.D. Williams, a former principal on the St. George Colored School. Today, Williams Memorial is a center college.
History hiding in vacant heaps
Seated on folding chairs in a restored classroom within the renovated constructing, James and Linwood Ling reminisced about the old fashioned.
Ling, proprietor of the Ling Funeral Home in St. George, was 5 years outdated when his dad and mom, each educators, enrolled their solely little one within the college. After a summer season session, he graduated early in 1960 at age 16 from the brand new Williams Memorial High School. He later studied science and chemistry at Savannah State College.
Ling mentioned he feared after the St. George Colored School closed, the reminiscence of it dimmed. He mentioned he hoped the renovated college with a brand new kids’s museum “will be cherished by many, many people who attended school here and people who didn’t attend will learn many things they didn’t have no idea that took place here. Some of the people who graduated from here were inspired by the people who taught here.”
Vacant heaps close to the outdated Rosenwald college on Ann Street maintain the remnants of the city’s as soon as thriving Black enterprise district that included a movie show, juke joint, a soda store, barber store, grocery retailer, laundromat and two sweet shops in part of city generally known as Little Harlem.
Under agreements with landowners, the museum will lease the heaps after which develop them to interpret the historical past of the companies, mentioned James, a retired municipal courtroom choose in St. George, Ridgeville and Vance.
Inside the museum, James envisions replicas of the companies to provide kids a hands-on historical past lesson. The museum has caught the eye of Nichole Myles, government director of the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry, in Charleston. She’s serving to to design museum reveals.
“Children learn so much about the world around them, and about how they fit into it, through exploration and play,” she mentioned. “A children’s museum experience at the Rosenwald school in St. George is a thoughtful and joyful way to tell an important story to our youngest citizens, and I look forward to seeing it grow and develop.”
Outside the museum, three reveals will inform different almost forgotten tales. James desires to put in a railroad caboose and eating automobile to inform the 100-year historical past of Black males who served as Pullman porters on the nation’s rail strains. Another show will emphasize how electrical energy modified rural households. On a three-acre lot adjoining to the campus, plans additionally name for an amphitheater and a reproduction of a Black-owned grocery retailer operated by the native Pinckney household.
When the varsity, closed applications didn’t cease
James and his older sister, Bobbie Jean James, transferred in 1954 to the brand new Williams Memorial High School. She was within the third grade. Today, she’s a retired Hampton County instructor. Their dad and mom operated a grocery retailer and their father rented homes to out-of-town academics who taught on the Rosenwald college.
The six school rooms within the Rosenwald college didn’t have sufficient house for the entire space’s college students. Additional school rooms had been housed within the close by Good Hope Baptist Church and a small cinder block constructing known as the “community hut.” All of the varsity’s 1,000 college students, nonetheless, assembled for particular occasions within the college’s giant auditorium.
When the brand new Williams Memorial High School opened in 1954, it featured an indoor basketball courtroom, sizzling lunches and a faculty giant sufficient to accommodate the entire college students.
But till the Nineteen Seventies, St. George residents continued to make use of the old fashioned for social occasions, performs, recitals, coaching heart for civil rights employees and agricultural applications and a Head Start Center. It additionally had an in-ground swimming pool with a pavilion, added after the varsity closed.
Help the City Paper hold delivering excellence
Winner of high 2021 state journalism honors (greatest editorial writing and greatest cartoon), the Charleston City Paper brings you the Best of Charleston daily. Support our “unafraid” journalism with a one-time donation or grow to be a member of the City Paper Club.
