Cherry Hill School - Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, USA.
N 32° 14.083 W 080° 41.478
17S E 529083 N 3566494
Cherry Hill School - Marker Number 7-42.- A National Registered Historic Place. Located opposite St.James Church at the intersection of Dillon Rd and City Beach Rd, Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina, USA.
Waymark Code: WMYDKP
Location: South Carolina, United States
Date Posted: 06/02/2018
Views: 5
Cherry Hill School is a historic school for African-American students located at Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. It was built about 1937, and is a simple, gable-front rectangular one-room frame and weatherboard-sided schoolhouse on an open brick-pier foundation. The school operated until all African-American children attended the new consolidated elementary school in 1954.
Marker front - Inscription:
This one-room frame school, built ca. 1937, was the first separate school building constructed for African-American students on Hilton Head Island. It replaced an earlier Cherry Hill School, which had held its classes in personage of St. James Baptist Church. After the black community on the island raised funds to buy this tract, Beaufort County agreed to build this school.
Side 2 - Reverse Text
This was an elementary school with one teacher, with an average of about 30 students. It had grades 1-5 when it opened in 1937, adding grade 6 the next school year. The black community helped pay for maintenance of the school and also supplemented teacher salaries. Cherry Hill School, which closed in 1954, was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
Erected 2013 by St. James Baptist Church. (Marker Number 7-42.)
From the South Carolina Register of Historic Places, website:
"The Cherry Hill School, built ca. 1937, is significant as a building associated with the development of African-American education during segregation in South Carolina. The school operated until all African-American children attended the new consolidated elementary school in 1954. The community that organized, purchased the property, built, helped maintain, and attended the school was comprised of the descendants of the former-slave town of Mitchelville, the first community to mandate education in the South.
At the time of construction of the Cherry Hill School, the island was still an isolated, largely undeveloped, unincorporated portion of Beaufort County. The Cherry Hill School is the first and only freestanding, purpose-built schoolhouse for African-American children on Hilton Head Island.
When the Cherry Hill School was built, there were three other black elementary schools in privately owned buildings serving the various black neighborhoods on Hilton Head Island. However, none met in buildings specifically built as schools. The Cherry Hill School had the smallest enrollment of the black elementary schools on the island. The number of children enrolled specifically in the Cherry Hill School numbered from 27-32, with one teacher.
The building is a simple, gable-front rectangular one-room frame and weatherboard-sided schoolhouse on an open brick-pier foundation. The interior remains much as it did when the building opened. While the building was a public elementary school from 1937 to 1954 it was owned by the Beaufort County School District. The St. James Baptist Church purchased the school in 1956. The church extended and renovated the building in 1984. Listed in the National Register November 21, 2012."
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