Reunion of York and Chester small, historically black schools on Saturday

It’s a cliche to hear someone talk about how, in the old days, they had to walk for miles to attend a little schoolhouse in all kinds of weather. But for some, that’s really the way it was.

For those who grew up going to small, all-black country schools – most of them supported by churches and private donations – that was the way things were.

“We didn’t have no bus,” said Eddie Barber. “We walked to school on cold mornings and hot days, 2 or 3 miles.”

Barber attended primary school at Mount Calvary School affiliated with Mount Calvary AME Zion Church, one of at least two-dozen schools in York County that operated between the 1920s and the beginnings of integration in the 1950s.

On Saturday, the living alumni of those schools are holding a reunion at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church on Dunlap Roddey Road, which once had a school of its own. The reunion is set to run from 3 to 6 p.m., and organizers are hoping to find more people who attended the schools in York and Chester counties.

Gladys Feely Robinson works to maintain the old Liberty Hill schoolhouse in Catawba as chair of the Liberty Hill Rosenwald School Foundation. The whitewashed, two-room school building on South Anderson Road is one of two historic Rosenwald schools still standing in York County, the other being the Carroll School on Ogden Road in Rock Hill.

She originally envisioned the reunion as bringing together Rosenwald alumni, but later expanded the definition to all church-affiliated schools in the area, whether they were Rosenwald schools or, like Mount Calvary, not.

“Most of the people in the community just aren’t familiar with that term,” Robinson said.

But they probably should be. Julius Rosenwald was the president of Sears, Roebuck and Co. a century ago. Through the Rosenwald Foundation, he worked with African-American leaders such as Booker T. Washington in the 1920s to fund segregated, cash-strapped schools for black children throughout the South, including 486 in South Carolina that have been identified by the state Department of Archives and History.

Through the efforts of those at the reunion, Robinson hopes to be able to identify more Rosenwald schools in the area.

“This reunion is being held to collect history,” Robinson said, hoping the attendees will bring stories, photos and artifacts from the old schools that can shine a light on a time that now seems far away.

“If we don’t take it on ourselves, it will be lost,” she said. “Older adults need to know their history as much as children.”

Most of the schools in York County, at least 20 of which have records of receiving Rosenwald funds, only ran through the seventh grade, and the student body was so small, multiple grades were seated in separate rows in a single classroom. Students attended class – on foot – from October to March, when they weren’t needed to assist their parents in the fields.

The schools often had few materials to work with. Students used outhouses, got water from a spring and, in winter, chopped their own firewood.

“All we had to start with were rhyming books, Humpty Dumpty and Henny Penny,” said Annie Anderson, who started first grade at Mount Calvary in 1932.

As church schools, the curriculum had a heavy emphasis on Scripture as the basis for instruction and the guiding hand of the schools’ world view.

“As a child at Mount Calvary, I learned the 23rd Psalm. I said it every day before I ever opened a book,” said Mildred Camps, who went on to become a minister. “When I read the word of God (years later), I found I already knew the psalm and thought, ‘How do I know this?’ And then I remembered sitting in the classroom.”

This week’s reunion comes 15 years after a similar one organized by Margaret McNeal, who at 85 is old enough to have been a student at the rural Hopewell School and then did student teaching at the Carroll School in 1949-50, when it was called the New Zion School. That reunion drew 50 people, and McNeal said she’s been hearing from her fellow worshipers at Pleasant Ridge about holding another one ever since.

Unfortunately, many of those at that reunion have since died. Robinson said organizers are hoping for 30 at this weekend’s event, with 25 confirmed so far. Anyone else interested in attending is asked to call Robinson at 803-207-5236.

Saturday’s reunion is especially exciting for Anderson, who was too ill to attend the last one. With the passage of time, this might be one of the last chances for those who lived through a brief window in history to get together and talk about it first hand.

“I’ll be 89 if I live till October,” Anderson said. “I may not live to see another one.”

This story was originally published August 7, 2015 at 6:44 PM with the headline "Reunion of York and Chester small, historically black schools on Saturday."