The Keith School Museum is a replica of the original Keith School. The school’s brick foundation is inside a fenced area in front of the museum on Clements Ferry Road in lower Berkeley County. A historic marker, covered with black plastic, will be unveiled Saturday. | Photo by Herb Frazier

The Wando-Huger Community Corporation will unveil a historic mark Saturday at the Keith School Museum, the site of a school that served the area for three decades.

The three-hour event to unveil the maker will begin at 4 p.m. at the museum, located at 1509 Clements Ferry Road.

Vernelle Dickerson of Huger, the Wando-Huger Community Corporation’s spokesperson, said the marker is necessary “to preserve our history and legacy and remember our ancestors who built this educational institution. They had envisioned the path to freedom as education.”

Dickerson said the marker is the first step toward placing the school site on the National Register of Historic Places. 

A one-room school opened on the site in the 1920s. By the 1930s it was known as the Keith School where two teachers provided instructions for about 70 students in grades first through sixth.

Children attended the school until 1955. In its last year, four teachers taught about 100 students. The Keith School was one of several community based Black schools that were replaced with state-government public schools after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregated schools.

Many African American residents in the Huger, Wando and Cainhoy area can trace their ancestry to enslaved people who toiled on plantations along the Wando, Cooper and East Branch of the Cooper rivers.

The mission of the nonprofit Wando-Huger Community Corporation is to improve and enhance the quality of life of all residents of the Wando-Huger community through social justice, community education and economic and housing development opportunities.



Help keep the City Paper free.

No paywalls.
No newspaper subscription cost.
Free delivery at 800 locations from downtown to North Charleston to Johns Island to Summerville to Mount Pleasant.

Help support independent journalism by donating today.