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Willow Hill Elementary School for Negroes: A Georgia Equalization School

Willow Hill Elementary School for Negroes: A Georgia Equalization School is a Georgia historical marker in Bulloch County, dedicated 2014.

At 4235 Willow Hill Road in Portal.

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Willow Hill School was established in 1874 during Reconstruction as one of the first schools for African Americans in Bulloch County. It was privately supported until being sold to the local Board of Education in 1920. In 1954 the county built a new "equalization" school as part of a statewide strategy to resist federally mandated integration. These schools addressed blatant geographic and racial disparities in education with new, modern (but still segregated) facilities and improved curricula. Willow Hill was one of five such African-American schools in Bulloch County and consolidated several older rural schools: Bennett Grove, Scarboro Grove, Rehovia, Gays Grove, Free Chapel, and Johnson Grove. The school closed in 1969 as part of the county's desegregation plan, and the students and faculty sent elsewhere. It reopened as an integrated intermediate school in 1971 with new faculty.

TodayHistorical map

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David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

Historical maps covering this location

1856 · Georgia. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1866 · Georgia. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1869 · Georgia. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1874 · Georgia. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
1895 · Gen. map IX. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

Georgia, 1869, covering the location of Willow Hill Elementary School for Negroes: A Georgia Equalization School, with a pin at the marker's coordinates — Georgia, 1869, covering this location. David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries. The pin is ours, placed from the marker's coordinates.

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This historical marker is part of the Georgia Historical Marker Program and was erected by the Georgia Historical Society. Marker texts and locations come from the Society's own marker database.

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