Cherry Hill School | |
Location | 210 Dillon Rd. Hilton Head Island, South Carolina |
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Coordinates | 32°14′05″N 80°41′28″W / 32.2347°N 80.6912°W |
Area | less than one acre |
Built | c. 1937 |
Architectural style | Vernacular |
NRHP reference No. | 12000965 [1] |
Added to NRHP | November 21, 2012 |
Part of a series of articles on |
Racial and ethnic segregation |
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Cherry Hill School is a historic school for African-American students located at Hilton Head Island, Beaufort County, South Carolina. It was the first separate school building for African-American students on the island.
is a simple, gable-front rectangular one-room frame and weatherboard-sided schoolhouse on an open brick-pier foundation.
The community that built and helped maintain the school consisted of the descendants of the former-slave town of Mitchelville, the first community to mandate education in the South. The community raised the funds to buy land for the school building. [2] The building would replace an earlier Cherry Hill School, which held its classes at St. James parsonage. [2]
The school was built about 1937. [2] It was an elementary school with one teacher that served about 30 students annually. When it opened it taught grades 1–5; 6th grade was added in the 1938 school year. [2]
The school operated until all African-American children attended the new consolidated Hilton Head Elementary School in 1954. [3] The St. James Baptist Church purchased the school in 1956, and used the building as a multi-purpose space. [3] The church extended and renovated the building in 1984. [4] [5]
It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. [1] In 2013 a historical marker was erected near the building. [6]
In 2019 plans were announced to relocate the school as part of an expansion for the Hilton Head Airport. [7]