The site of an old Black school from the Jim Crow era is the site of an historic dig!
“The site of the historic 1904 Long Point Schoolhouse is undergoing an excavation by the College of Charleston Archaeology Field School. The site is only the third Black schoolhouse to be excavated in the United States.
The original site of the schoolhouse, located off of Seacoast Parkway in Mount Pleasant, is being excavated to learn more about how the school functioned, the students that attended and the teachers that instructed those children.
The Long Point Schoolhouse served the Snowden community from 1904 to 1953. It predates Brown v. Board of Education and functioned during the height of the Jim Crow era. Not much record of the school exists. There is no list of students or teachers that taught at the school. It’s unclear what the students were learning or what their daily lives consisted of.
This is the kind of information that the college and the African American Settlement Community Historic Commission (AASCHC) are hoping to uncover.
“We came to the decision [to excavate] simply because a lot of the information we were trying to obtain, we just could not. Typically, a lot of our history is sometimes underneath structures. It was buried there. And the only way to get it in a lot of cases is by doing an archaeological study,” said AASCHC President, John Wright.
Only two other Black schoolhouse sites in the United States have been excavated. To be only the third Black schoolhouse to undergo an archaeological study means “everything,” Wright said.
“It speaks volumes to this African American Settlement Commission and just how far we were willing to go to ensure that every aspect of this school’s history will be recorded,” Wright said. To read the entire article from the Moultrie News, CLICK HERE.
There’s lots more information on the school and the Snowden Community on the AASCHC website. CLICK HERE.