This Former School Building for American American Students was Open until 1970

Martin Elementary School, Bronwood Georgia

Date added: August 15, 2024

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Georgia
School

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The school operated from 1956 until 1970 when the Terrell County Board of Education integrated the local school system. During Reconstruction, the state of Georgia created its first statewide public school system. From the start, the state's public schools were segregated by race. Racial segregation remained the status quo in the state until the late-1960s when many individual counties integrated. Following the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board decision, most local school boards throughout the state of Georgia, and American South, developed strategies to resist impending federally mandated integration ordinances. In Terrell County, as in numerous other Georgia counties, the local school board initially considered plans to close their public schools rather than submit to racial integration. Such plans attracted little support for working and middle class white families whose only source of education for their children were the local publicly funded comprehensive schools. Equipped with new sources of revenue following the state's school building initiative launched by populist governor Herman Talmadge, local school boards saw the construction of new state-of-the-art school buildings for African-American schoolchildren as a possible way to circumvent impending federal mandates. The most modern school buildings of the period were those designed in the International Style. Such designs included large-scale buildings capable of holding large class sizes in comfort while optimizing common elements such as massive walls of elongated daylight windows that provided students with fresh air and proper lighting. The all-white Terrell County school board believed that if they built new school buildings for African-American students then perhaps the local African-American community as well as national Civil Rights advocates might view this as a progressive step forward that might convince both parties to forestall integration into the unforeseeable future. When Terrell County integrated its school system in 1970, it was one of the last remaining racially segregated school systems in the state. While racially segregated schools represent the state of Georgia's past racist public policies, African-American schools developed into major community centers within most black communities. In the town of Bronwood, Martin Elementary School is one of the few remaining remnants of a mid-20^th Century African-American community that since the school's closing in 1970 has lost much of its social and cultural cohesiveness.

Martin Elementary School was built in 1956 as part of the Terrell County Board of Education's school building program and as a defiant effort to resist impending federal mandates requiring the integration of the state of Georgia's public learning institutions. Since the United States Supreme Court handed down the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling in 1896, the state of Georgia maintained a segregated public school system based upon the constitutional principles outlined in that historic decision. Prior to Plessy v. Ferguson, the state never operated integrated public schools, but instead established black-only and white-only schools in most counties (some counties lacked black schools prior to Plessy v. Ferguson). The Plessy decision transformed the state's existing de facto segregation policies into de jure laws that were constitutionally upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. In many areas of the state, African-American leaders saw the creation of racially integrated schools as a significant-though limited-step toward achieving greater access to education. African-American schools suffered from inadequate funding throughout their entire existence (1865-1970). Local school boards allocated funds on an unequal basis often illegally skirting the Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" mandate. Despite fiscal concerns, black schools emerged as important symbols within the state's African-American community.

Following World War II, African-American soldiers returning from Europe and the Pacific began demanding equal civil rights as defined by the constitution and restricted by court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson. The integration of public schools was one of the first goals of civil rights advocates in the state of Georgia and throughout the nation. Influenced heavily by the teachings of earlier leaders such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, mid-20th-century civil rights advocates saw equal access to education as a critical step toward obtaining additional civil liberties. In Georgia, state and local officials, as well as national representatives, lobbied to maintain the status quo and saw integration as a direct challenge to their perceived "states rights."

During the immediate post-World War II period, civil rights proponents developed a legal strategy that if successful would overturn existing segregation laws in many parts of the country. Their initial plan revolved around building a case that African Americans were equal taxpayers and therefore deserved to have equal access to the services funded in part by their taxable income and spending. Future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, who served as lead counsel during the groundbreaking Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954) case, understood that southern states in particular and the nation in general were unresponsive to pleas based upon assumed notions of social justice and racial equality. Rather than build a philosophical argument, Marshall and others formed cases based upon the shared notion that taxpayers deserved equal service regardless of their race, gender, or creed. During the early 1950s several state level cases challenging segregated schools climbed the judicial ladder toward the highest court in the land. In Georgia, white leaders grew increasingly concerned that the Supreme Court-led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justice Hugo Black-would soon overturn the existing segregation codes based upon the facts presented to the court that the state's black schools were unequal in terms of funding and facilities in comparison to their white counterparts. One strategy adopted by numerous county school systems was to resist integration by allocating unprecedented sums of money for the construction of new modern-designed school buildings for African Americans. White leaders hoped that the Supreme Court and the region's African-American population would see such an action as being in step with the existing Plessy v. Ferguson ruling. If counties provided equal schools then perhaps the Supreme Court and federal government would allow segregated schooling to continue into the unforeseeable future. Their strategy coincided well with Georgia governor Herman E. Talmadge's statewide school building program that provided counties with additional funding to pay for new construction costs.

Like most white Georgians in 1954, the white residents of Terrell County were willing to resort to extreme measures to resist racial integration. One year after the Brown v. Board decision ruled racially segregated public services and accommodations as unconstitutional, the Dawson News, a newspaper published in Terrell County, reported that local whites were prepared to shut down the entire school system rather than submit to integration and that the local school board had moved forward with its plans to build several new schools for African-American students. The newspaper printed a statement released by Robert Pinkston-county school superintendent, that declared if the local schools were integrated that the county would respond by refusing to collect any further tax revenues. If implemented such an action would have effectively shut down the county's entire public school system. The Georgia General Assembly considered a similar proposal. Fortunately, only two of its members, one of whom was future governor Zell Miller, supported the plan, thereby sparing the state's school system from closure.

Prior to the Brown v. Board decision, few African-American schools in the state that were built using public funds were architect-designed. The vast majority of the post-Brown schools in the state built for African Americans were architect-designed. This change reflects the efforts of white leaders to resist federal mandates. They hoped that by providing African-American schoolchildren with state-of-the-art designed school buildings they might be able to prevent or at least delay desegregation. Terrell County adopted a similar tactic. In 1954, they hired architect Edward Vason Jones (a native of neighboring Albany, Georgia) to design several modern school buildings. Jones completed the job during a period when many white architects in the state refused to work on projects to be used or funded by African Americans. Early in his career, Jones developed numerous professional relationships with African-American carpenters and craftsmen whose woodworking skills complemented his classical-style renovation projects. Designing the Martin Elementary School was a unique opportunity for Jones. Most of his architectural work had been in the Neo-Classical Style. Terrell County wanted a modern building. Jones, nonetheless, accepted the commission and designed the extant International-style school building. The county hired the S. J. Curry Company of Albany to construct the building. The S. J. Curry Company built more than one dozen schools in south Georgia during the 1950s and 1960s.

After experiencing several problems related to funding and construction delays, the Martin Elementary School opened in September of 1956. For the next 14 years, the school served as the major educational institution for African-American schoolchildren in the town of Bronwood as well as a central location for community gatherings. The school held classes for kindergarten through the eighth grade. The school also had the town of Bronwood's sole library. During its period of operation over 1,000 black schoolchildren matriculated at the school (Attachment One). While African Americans in Bronwood welcomed the new school, they continued to protest the existence of racially segregated schools. Finally, in 1970, the Terrell County Board of Education integrated its local school district. The county reluctantly chose to do so rather than lose its annual allotment of federal education funds. Terrell County was one of the last counties in the state to desegregate their public schools.

The integration of the Terrell County public school system was a major victory for local African Americans, but the monumental change spelled the end for Martin Elementary School. When most counties integrated their school system they chose to close existing black schools and relocate its students to extant white schools. In Bronwood, Martin Elementary School closed in 1970 as its students were bused to a former all-white elementary school located in the county seat of Dawson. As was the case in thousands of African-American communities scattered throughout the deteriorating Jim Crow South, the town of Bronwood suffered from the closure of its black school. The school had been more than an educational resource. The school was a focal point of local community activities as well as a source of employment.

Since its closure, the school building was temporarily used as a nightclub during the late-1980s, but has been otherwise vacant since 1970. Today, the current property owners, Herbert L. and Dorothy Tomlin, hope to restore the school building so that it can be used as a community center.

Building Description

Martin Elementary School, named in honor of local African-American educator Walter Martin, is a L-shaped, one-story, 13-room schoolhouse, with International-style elements, located in the town of Bronwood (Terrell County) in southwest Georgia. The school has retained its essential form and floor plan since the S. J. Curry Company of Albany completed its construction in 1956. Architect Edward Vason Jones of Albany, Georgia, designed the school that opened in 1956 and closed in 1970. The historic school is the only building on the four-acre property. The property is located in the small town of Bronwood-which is in a predominately rural part of the state. The extant building is vacant.

Martin Elementary School was built in 1956 as a segregated public school for African-American children in the town of Bronwood and its surrounding area. The school is a L-shaped, one-story building with International-style elements. The rectilinear building is clad in red brick and has a flat roof. The building's facade contains an elongated wall of glass (daylight) windows. Typical among International-style buildings, the school has minimal ornamentation and was built using industrially produced materials.

Martin Elementary School's historic floor plan remains intact. The main portion of the school has a 173-foot central hallway that connects seven classrooms, two restrooms, a library, a principal's office, and three storage rooms to the cafeteria/auditorium. Each classroom and the library are 32 x 24 feet. All of the interior doors have an overhead transom light that opens into the interior of each room allowing for additional air circulation. The classrooms and library have two interior windows that allow light and air to pass from the central hallway into the room. The exterior walls in the classrooms, offices, and library have an elongated wall of daylight windows that provide each space with natural lighting and a constant supply of fresh air. The library has a doorway that leads to a small room that was once used as the school librarian's office. This office space is the only room in the main portion of the building without direct access to the central hallway. The remaining rooms along the central hallway were used as office space for the principal and his/her staff, storage closets, and restrooms).

The western end of the central hallway has a rectangular-shaped room that once served as the school's cafeteria and auditorium. This multi-purpose room has a stage. Unlike most of the other rooms in the school, this room does not have an elongated bay of daylight windows. Instead, this room has six nine-over-nine windows. The historic overhead lighting fixtures can be seen in this room.