The Cherry Hill School, built circa 1937, is significant as a building associated with the development of African American education during segregation in South Carolina. The school operated until all African-American children attended the new consolidated elementary school in 1954. The community that organized, purchased the property, built, helped maintain, and attended the school was comprised of the descendants of the former-slave town of Mitchelville, the first community to mandate education in the South. At the time of the construction of the Cherry Hill School, the island was still an isolated, largely undeveloped, unincorporated portion of Beaufort County.
[Confirm Copy] Jenkins, Septima Clark (1898-1987), and Bernice Robinson (1914-1994) founded the first Citizenship School in 1957 to encourage literacy and voter registration. Its success led to many similar schools across the South, called “the base on which the whole civil rights movement was built.” The Progressive Club was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
In 1954, Hilton Head Elementary School opened for the island’s black students. The school's construction was part of the state' School Expansion Program from 1951 - 1954. With seven classrooms and a cafeteria and auditorium, this was the largest school ever built on the island. Integration of the school was mandatory in 1972. Isaac Wilborn was this school's only principal, serving from 1954 until 1974, when the school closed because it was replaced with a larger, new school. The building was used for a county courthouse annex for a few years and was torn down in the early 1990's.
