Historic
Harrington School
Come inside the last remaining African American one-room schoolhouse on the Georgia coast – originally known as the Harrington Graded School, constructed in 1924.
Tours: Tuesday - Friday from 10-2
Free; Donations graciously accepted
Historic Harrington School is more than an old wooden building. It is a living testament to the tight-knit community of ancestors who built this school more than a century ago and is where we gather today.
The Historic Harrington School, formerly known as the Harrington Graded School, was built in the 1920s and served as the main educational structure for three African American communities on St. Simons Island. It hosted grades 1-7 until desegregation in the 1960s when students left to attend St. Simons Elementary. In 1968, the building was converted to a day care center and used for this purpose until 1970.
Over the years, the community gathered here for Halloween apple-bobbing parties in the fall, theatrical plays, covered-dish dinners, visits by Santa and Christmas gift exchanges. In the spring, there were Easter activities, the plaiting of the Maypole, proms and high school graduations.
Community organizations such as the Harrington Parent-Teacher Association and the Harrington Civic Club also used the building for meetings and fundraising events.
Harrington Community Park
Visit Harrington Community Park, established on 11 acres just east of the school on South Harrington Road. It opened to the public in December 2016.
The property contains ecologically sensitive wetlands, and two ponds that provide habitat for federally endangered wood storks and other native wildlife.
Enjoy walking trails, seating, and viewing platforms overlooking the ponds on the property. This park, the result of efforts by St. Simons Land Trust, supporters of the Park at Harrington, St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition, and the Glynn County Commission, gives the entire community and its visitors access to the beautiful landscape and rich history of the area.
The Land Trust owns the one acre surrounding the former schoolhouse and has provided a 99-year lease on the property to the St. Simons African American Heritage Coalition that maintains and runs the Historic Harrington School.
Enjoy:
- Walking
- Cycling
- Birdwatching
- Picnic areas
- Dog walking
- Playground
291 South Harrington Road | St. Simons Island, GA 31522
Historic Timeline
- The Harrington Community was settled by emancipated slaves who had worked on the plantations on St. Simons Island.
- Many of the residents were formerly enslaved and had worked for some of the Island’s white founding families, such as the Couper and Gould families. The settlement land was formerly property of the Demere family.
- Census data from 1900, 1910, and 1920 reveal a vital African American community
of sawmill workers and carpenters. Many of the children were listed as “at school.”
Most of the residents were literate. - Glynn County Board of Education in 1919 moved to build three Rosenwald Schools (schools funded by Sears Chairman Julius Rosenwald for rural African American communities). Designs were developed in cooperation with Tuskegee Institute.
- A 1920 survey of City of Brunswick and Glynn County Schools by the U.S. Bureau of Education recommended that a Rosenwald school, or similar plan, be built for colored students on St. Simons Island. Harrington School House closely resembles the Rosenwald One Teacher Community School Plan.
- Interviewers from the Georgia Writers Unit of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) came to St. Simons Island in the 1930s. Their report, published as Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (1940), describes Harrington’s homes and residents. Among those interviewed was Harrington resident Ben Sullivan, son of Belali, butler to James Couper at Hopeton-on-the-Altamaha rice and sugar plantation.
- Lorenzo Dow Turner interviewed Harrington resident Belle Murray for his study of Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949), the first – and still most important – book on the Gullah language. Belle Murray was a member of the Wing family, as was Isadora Hunter, who donated land to the St. Simons Land Trust in 2004 to preserve the schoolhouse. Turner recorded several songs for Lydia Parrish, author of Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands (1942).
- Harrington School is photographed by photographer Foresta Hodgson
Wood in Parrish’s Slave Songs. - Alan Lomax filmed the original Georgia Sea Island Singers at the Camp between North and South Harrington Road in 1961. These recordings are part of the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Folkways collection.
- The 1974 movie Conrack, starring Jon Voight, was filmed at Harrington School. The movie is based on Pat Conroy’s book, The Water is Wide, about his experiences as a young white educator teaching Gullah-Geechee children on Daufuskie Island, S.C.
- Pressure by developers in the 1990s caused many African American homes and property in Harrington to be sold for subdivisions. Residents who did not want to sell their heritage put up yellow “Don’t Ask/Won’t Sell” signs in their yards.
- Isadora Hunter donated her portion of land to the St. Simons Land Trust in 2004. The Land Trust and Glynn County could preserve from developers the one-room schoolhouse and 12 surrounding acres of “sun-dappled forests and ponds.”
- Harrington was listed as one of 2011’s Places in Peril. The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation’s Places in Peril designation identifies significant historic, archaeological and cultural properties that are threatened by demolition, deterioration or insensitive public policy or development, and have a demonstrable level of community interest, commitment and support.
- Historic Harrington School Cultural Center officially reopened in 2017 after years of restoration.
Folklorist Alan Lomax Recorded in the Schoolhouse
British folk singer Shirley Collins accompanied Alan Lomax (folklorist whose recordings with his father helped to develop the Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Culture) on his 1959 trip through the South to record traditional folk music. Collins wrote about her yearlong trip in her book America Over the Water: A Musical Journey with Alan Lomax , published in 2004.
In chapter 21, titled Georgia Sea Island of St. Simons (pages 165-170), Collins described meeting and recording John Davis, Bessie Jones, and the Georgia Sea Island Singers. She wrote:
“The music was superb, the conditions difficult. We were working in the old schoolhouse, and Alan said it was worse than recording inside a barrel. For two nights we worked there, taking bottles of bourbon and crates of Coca-Cola to keep everyone going. The nights were hot and sultry. One night, after we’d opened up the windows to let in some much-needed air, I counted moths that flew in and settled and gave up at over four hundred.”
These recordings at the Library of Congress were made at the Harrington School! Listen to the recordings at The Association for Cultural Equity.