Two one room schoolhouses on St. Simons Island provided educational foundation for African American children from the mid 1920s until 1954 when Glynn County consolidated the public schools and forced the island’s black students to go to segregated schools on the mainland. Emory Rooks recalls that the students at his new school thought the island children were “rich kids.” We weren’t, he replied. However, they were more well-off academically thanks to their teachers: Mr. and Mrs. Johnson at Harrington and Mr. Baisden at South End.

Adrian Johnson and Louetta Johnson lived in the South End. Both had graduated from Claflin College in SC. and took jobs as teachers at the Harrington School. Mrs. Johnson taught the younger students; Mr. Johnson taught the older students. Lessons included English, reading, writing, diagramming sentences, cursive writing, math, and current affairs. “Our teachers always made sure we were aware of what was going on outside our small island. They really worked hard to actually expose their students to an education that was going to help them in the future.“ So anytime, anything would happen, nationally [Pearl Harbor] or President dying or big event politically he [Mr. Johnson] would expose us to it. Because we were small and isolated didn’t mean we were not exposed to things of the world… They tried to bring the best in of us. They really did.” Harrington students went on to be nurses, air force colonels, teachers and principals, and small business owners. In whatever profession, Mrs. Gibson pointed out Harrington students tried to be good citizens because “we were taught, to be good citizens.“

Ralph Baisden, Senior, and his wife Alethia Buckley Baisden both taught at the South End School, now demolished, near Lotson Avenue and Mallory Street. Ralph Baisden Senior was a man of many trades – a carpenter, a house painter, and a notary public, but “if someone had asked, why did God create Ralph Baisden…it would be to be an educator “said his son Ralph Jr. Born in 1894 in Townsend, GA Baisden Senior attended school in McIntosh County, then college in Savannah, and graduate school at Columbia University in New York. He was a WWI veteran. His son described his father as “diligent and persistent.” Mr. Baisden taught it all – reading, writing, arithmetic and social. At this time period, South End student Rosalind Sheppard, observed,

Mr. Baisden was the first person to start an oratorical contest for black students. His son proudly described the course:

Mr. Baisden viewed each of his students as he viewed his own five children. Sharing a photo with the Mercer U interviewer, his son emphasized “look at the way he is looking at his students…He’s just not some distant person. These (38) are his students. Those are his family. Just as his own five children are his family. He would have kept up with each one of them as they progressed throughout lives.”

Mrs. Baisden, also a native of McIntosh County, used to take very young Ralph (“in swaddling clothes” he joked) to school when she taught. She was “A very strong mother, a very strong reader at a time where women would tend to be in the background. She was out front in teaching school…being a leader in church. I was blessed to have two parents of that caliber.” Baisden remembers family tradition of dinner table together when parents and children discuss their day. When presidential elections were broadcast on the radio, “we knew all the candidates. We knew all the positions.“

Finding trained teachers for Negro schools was difficult in late 1880s – 1930s. A “normal” school offered training to be teachers and skills to have jobs.

As early as 1892 the Blacks of Brunswick, Georgia were discussing the need for a normal school.  Through the efforts of Miss Carrie E. Bemus, a white teacher from Pennsylvania, and Reverend H. L. Bleach, the school became a reality.  Its aim, according to an ad in the Macon Telegraph, was to prepare students “not only to teach successfully, but to become true leaders among their race.”  Classes opened on October 6, 1903.   The school later became Selden Normal and Industrial Institute, named for Dr. Charles Selden.  After the death of Miss Bemus in 1909, Selden Institute came under the care of the Presbyterian Church.

Among the courses of study were cooking, domestic science, sewing, millenary, farming, gardening, carpentry, and shoemaking.  Later Selden added nurse training, teacher training, and business. The school published a paper called “The Work,” and did print jobs in the Black community. Even with the industrial bias, Selden had a school choral society, a dramatics club, and a school quartet that toured in 1917 to raise funds. In 1933 Selden merged with a similar Presbyterian school, the Gillespie Normal Institute in Cordele, Georgia. The Gillespie-Selden Institute continued in Cordele until 1956 when a city-wide school reorganization ended the school. (Source:www.lostcolleges.com)

Several RIsley High School teachers attended Selden Institute.