Laurens County Museum launches ‘Road to Education for Black Americans,’ and culture in the South – The Laurens County Advertiser

AUTHENTICITY — Laurens County Museum’s Design Director Chris Pennington hammers another piece of reclaimed wood to a wall of the one-room schoolhouse at the Laurens County Museum. It is part of the museum’s Black History Month programming on the topic of “The Road to Education for Black Americans.” Photo by Judith Brown.
Laurens, South Carolina – In celebration of Black History Month, the Laurens County Museum is presenting a series of programs, with an exhibit opening this Saturday morning with a lecture on the educational history of Blacks in the South.
The exhibit opens at 10 a.m. Feb. 15, and at 11 a.m., Laurens native Lillie Beasley Glover, a 1957 graduate of the former Sanders High School and a Professor Emeritus from South Carolina State University, will present a lecture on “The Road to Education for Black Americans.”
“We recreated a one room schoolhouse in the way that it would have been in one of the early Black schools,” said Museum Administrator Connie Post. “We added the wood stove, a water bucket, some of the historic readers.”
Signage includes a timeline and QR codes for more information. “We will talk about segregation and integration,” Post said. “They are all part of the road to education for Black Americans and how we got to where we are today.”

There are other programs planned as well, including one by Presbyterian College Professor Kendra Hamilton, who at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 18, will discuss her book, “Romancing the Gullah.” The book focuses on the Gullah culture which is still alive in coastal South Carolina and why it’s considered to be the “cradle of Black culture in America.”
A Charleston native, Hamilton is an associate professor of English and the director of Southern Studies at Presbyterian College, and she will have books available at the program.
There will also be a free singing Sunday, Feb. 23, at 3 p.m, Post said, as Harold Ligon has coordinates “A Musical Visit to Days of Old.”
Joining Ligon will be choirs from Smyrna AME Church and Laurel Hill Baptist Church, presenting Negro spirituals, common meter music, slavery hymns and other selections, Post said.
The programs are free and the public is welcome to attend.
Later in the spring, a program will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, at the Piney Grove School, a one-room African American School that is now part of the preservation effort at Culbertson Backcountry Settlement in Gray Court.
During the month-long Black History exhibit at the Laurens County Museum, early county educators will be highlighted, including Thomas Sanders and Pratt Suber, who was the first Black superintendent.
Committee members Elma Morrison, Susan Calhoun Ware, Cassandra Campbell and others are providing their input for the stories that can be told.
“Students come here on school trips and we show them the Sanders High class picture to explain about segregation and then about integration, because many of today’s young students have never heard of integration and segregation,” said Post.
“It’s important they know the stories. I can read the history and I’m an empathetic person so I can go there in my mind part way but I can never feel it,” she said. “I told the committee members, ‘You felt it so you have to help bring it here so other people can feel it too.’ The stories are what keep history alive and changes our perspective. When you have a conversation with someone different from you and hear their stories, you’re changed by it and the world is better for it.”
For details about the upcoming programs see the Laurens County Museum’s Facebook page.
The museum is located at 116 S. Public Square in Laurens. It’s open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and entrance is free.
This story ran Page 1 in the Wednesday, Feb. 12 issue of The Laurens County Advertiser.