Eternally Yours
A few miles outside the city limits of Portal, Georgia, hidden just off the main road, sits an unassuming school with a history that spans nearly a century and a half.
For generations, Willow Hill School was at the heart of education for many African-American elementary and middle school children in the small Northern Bulloch County community. Founded by former slaves in 1874, and integrated in 1971, the school closed its doors in 1999, yet its historic educational mission survives.
Today, alumni, faculty, staff and students are engaged in several research projects aimed at preserving the school’s vital role in the community’s history by assisting efforts to transform Willow Hill into a lasting cultural treasure. Georgia Southern and Willow Hill alumnae Lummie Lashay Allen Harris (’98) and Patricia Harden Willis (’78) are two of the founding board members of the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center (WHHRC). Harris, Willis and other descendants of the school’s founders organized efforts to secure the building when it went on the auction block in 2005.
Harris, a third-generation educator who teaches in Dekalb County, Georgia, said she grew up hearing stories about how integral Willow Hill was to the community. “Knowing that this school was not only a part of my history, but a part of my family’s history was enough motivation for me to get involved,” she explained. “It is important that we honor the legacy of countless community figures who impacted this small, close-knit, religious community. It is our desire to provide a place that continues to honor our ancestors and educate future generations.”
The Colleges of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Education, Public Health, and Health and Human Sciences are all working with the WHHRC to do exactly that, in a community where ties still run deep. Public History Professor Michael Van Wagenen, Ph.D., said the Center provides a unique opportunity for Georgia Southern faculty and students to participate in efforts to preserve its legacy. Both Van Wagenen and Brent Tharp, Ph.D., director of the Georgia Southern Museum, have collaborated with Dr. Alvin Jackson, president of the WHHRC, and his wife, Gayle Jackson, Ph.D., the Center’s development director, on exhibits and collections.
“I find the story of the Willow Hill community so compelling because of their inspiring perseverance and dedication to education in general,” said Tharp. “Prior to and just after the Civil War, Georgia gave little to no value to the idea of public education. Yet, in 1874, the recently freed slaves of the Willow Hill community were determined to see their children in school, creating the longest-serving school in Bulloch County, black or white. Their story is an example for us all and deserves to be preserved and celebrated.”
Van Wagenen is spearheading the initiative to transcribe and digitize dozens of interviews with former Willow Hill students and teachers that Jackson has conducted over the past 30 years. “Dr. Jackson’s oral history collection represents a priceless cultural and historical resource that needs to be preserved and shared,” said Van Wagenen. “Local histories are the building blocks of our larger national narrative. The experiences of the people living in Willow Hill are a perfect example of this. Through their lives, we can better understand the history of race, class and gender in the United States.”
With the help of a graduate student, some of the interviews are available online as both audio and text files, and the oral histories will be a part of the special collections in the Zach S. Henderson Library.
For alumna Patricia Willis, her involvement in the Willow Hill project is a way of giving back to the school that was her first experience in formal education, and where she met her first playmates and friends, many of them lifelong.
“So much of what I experienced and learned at this school (Willow Hill) helped make me the person that I am today,” she said. “I am so proud of this institution and wanted to participate in ensuring that its legacy lasts forever.”
Although the current building was constructed in 1954, the school is celebrating the 140th anniversary of its founding this year. Board members are hopeful this historic milestone will be a significant moment within the community and helps engage people of all ages. Donations, grants and sponsorships are crucial if the WHHRC is to become a fully functioning museum and community center. Each Labor Day weekend, a fundraiser attracts hundreds of alumni to the school.
“It is our goal to create a network of alumni, friends, volunteers, researchers and corporations to support and sustain the long-term efforts of the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center,” said Jackson.
Arlene Daughtry Hendrix (’71), one of the first black undergraduates at Georgia Southern University, serves on the Willow Hill advisory board. “Someone once said, ‘There is something in the water at Portal that makes those who come out of there very different in an excellent kind of way,’” said Hendrix, who entered into a law enforcement career in New York after she graduated from Georgia Southern. “The legacy and impact of Willow Hill should be preserved, not only on the walls of the school, but in the hearts, ideas and dreams of any school, for this makes us eternal.”
The work of the WHHRC has captured the interest of faculty and students alike, and spawned partnerships with the organization on at least eight different projects, including saving Bennett Grove School. – Sandra Bennett
The work of the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center (WHHRC) has captured the interest of faculty and students alike, and spawned partnerships with the organization on at least eight different projects. Some are listed here.
Historic preservationist and Department of Sociology and Anthropology adjunct professor Inger Wood is leading the effort to move the last standing one-room African-American schoolhouse in Bulloch County to the WHHRC campus. Bennett Grove School was built by Benjamin Bennett, a former slave, circa 1918 and served first through seventh grades, until it closed in 1952. Students continued their education at Willow Hill, about six miles away.
In order to promote awareness of the one-room schoolhouse and to make the case for its preservation during a symposium held last winter in the College of Education auditorium, Wood was awarded a Georgia Humanities Council grant. Along with her husband, Jared Wood, a University anthropology professor, they organized a brush clearing and site cleanup with the help of the University Anthropological Society. This joint effort allowed them to better assess and document the architecture of the Bennett Grove building. They hope to further document the structure by using advanced laser-scanning technology called terrestrial LiDAR, that will provide detailed, three-dimensional digital image of the building “as-is,” or essentially a “snapshot in time.”
Wood acknowledged moving the school will be a challenge but said, “Last winter, the program kicked off fundraising efforts geared toward stabilizing the schoolhouse and making it safe for the planned move to the Willow Hill campus.”
Service Learning Projects
The Office of Student Leadership and Civil Engagement is providing students from various disciplines with service learning opportunities that will help the WHHRC fulfill its dream of turning the Willow Hill site into a museum and community center capable of offering educational, art and cultural activities to people throughout southeast Georgia.
Needs Assessment
Community Health professor and Service Learning Faculty Fellow Moya Alfonso, Ph.D., MSPH, teaches program evaluation and planning at the master’s and doctoral level in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health (JPHCOPH). The professor, along with students in her Community Health Analysis, Program Evaluation and Program Planning classes compiled a needs assessment that focused on determining the best ways for the WHHRC to serve the health and educational needs of youth in the Willow Hill community.
Graduate students worked with Alfonso to gather quantitative and qualitative data from focus group discussions with parents and children, as well as individual interviews with teachers from Portal Middle High School and key representatives from the community.
Alfonso, the 2013 winner of the JPHCOPH Outstanding Teaching and Mentoring Award, said, “Service learning enhances public health instruction and practice, providing students with real-life opportunities to apply what they learn in the classroom… Students really appreciate the opportunity to practice their skills and benefit directly by being able to include their experiences on their resumes. In addition, this project will result in peer-reviewed publications and potential grant opportunities, which enhance the University and my reputation as a scholar.”
Interior Design Project
Diane Phillips in the School of Human Ecology developed a service-learning project that captured the imagination of students in Studio 5, a Senior Level interior design course. They were tasked with creating designs that would show the best ways to use the current space in Willow Hill School.
Students researched the building’s historical documents, including furniture and equipment used in Willow Hill during the 1950s, so their designs would reflect the school’s style from that era. Their research, and focus on historic preservation, led to the identification of an American Standard Furniture Company chair in the building. The students reached out to American Standard to not only obtain historically accurate furniture designs, but also in search of some of the original paperwork showing Willow Hill’s purchase of the furniture. Phillips said after the final presentations, the advisory board was thrilled with the students’ individual designs, and added, “our students gave them more than they ever expected, they were overwhelmed by the design work, and more than anything else [the student projects] have allowed them to see a future vision that they will be able to work toward.”
College of Education
Professors Christine Draper, Ph.D., and Michelle Reidel, Ph.D., focused on the Willow Hill School in a curriculum development course for undergraduates. Methods I middle grades pre-service teacher candidates created special curricula as a community outreach project for the WHHRC and presented a bound copy of their work to officials of the organization. Draper and Reidel had their students create an integrated unit that included middle school lessons for teaching the history of Willow Hill.
Leadership Students
Students in Professor Todd Deal’s “Principles of Leadership” course initiated a middle school leadership curriculum last spring. Service-Learning Facilitator Ginny Byrd provided an age-appropriate curriculum based on the Leadership Office’s college curriculum. Deal’s students presented the leadership modules to students at the Boys and Girls Club. They presented each module twice, making improvements and designing activities to engage middle school students. Byrd is polishing the tested modules, and will deliver them to the WHHRC as her Southern Leaders Legacy Project for the Center’s use in a middle school summer enrichment program.
Community Service
More than 50 rising freshmen painted, cleaned and moved furnishings at Willow Hill as part of BUILD (Building Undergraduate Involvement in Leadership Development) in summer 2013, and continued their service this year by painting, cleaning and working on landscaping despite the hot summer temperatures. They even implemented the paint finishing designs that were submitted by interior design students.
“The Willow Hill organization has been absolutely wonderful to work with. They welcome a new team of students each day of BUILD, and are extremely generous telling the story of the school, giving the students time in the museum, and interacting with the students as we all work side by side,” said Wendy Denton, assistant director for Service-Learning. “Our students have an incredible experience working with this great project.”