The small Charleston County town of Lincolnville is preparing for a reunion to celebrate its residents and former students of a segregated school founded by a Northern philanthropist who wrapped pupils in blankets of Black excellence.
“We were taught that nobody was smarter than us or better than us,” said Lincolnville resident Pernessa Seele, who completed the 7th grade at Lincolnville Elementary School, founded a century ago this year. Students received hand-me-down books from White schools, but the teachers nevertheless challenged the children, she added.
The town and school were isolated incubators that produced global leaders in a variety of professions, said Seele, a noted public health activist named as one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2006. Seele’s ancestors were early town settlers and elected leaders. The renovated and expanded school building now is the town hall for Lincolnville, a community that was established in 1867 by Emanuel AME Church members who sought to escape racism in Charleston.
That history will be celebrated July 1-2 during the Lincolnville Family Reunion with a dinner and research project to capture oral histories and memorabilia of the school and town.
The effort has the support from the University of South Carolina Department of History. The Lincolnville Preservation & Historical Society will create an exhibit that will be mounted in one of the school’s original classrooms, said Seele, the society’s founder and president.
The exhibit will be part of a national collection of stories that acknowledge the vision of the late educator Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee University. He was a friend of Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears and Roebuck. Their collaboration in the 1920s led to more than 5,000 Rosenwald schools across the nation for Black students.
The Lincolnville school was one of 414 Rosenwald schools in South Carolina. At least 14 schools were built in Charleston County, stretching from Wadmalaw Island to Lincolnville to McClellanville, according to records from the S.C. Department of Archives and History.
The school was one of two schools that served Lincolnville. In 1899, the community built the Williams Graded School on land donated by Tony Williams, the town’s third mayor. It was closed in 1923, the year Lincolnville Elementary opened.
Lincolnville’s population has doubled to more than 1,000 people since Seele was a student at the school, she said. The predominantly Black town has some “comeyahs,” she said referring to recent arrivals.
“There is the reality that gentrification happens, and people want to come and live in Lincolnville,” she said. “That provides an opportunity for us to grow and share our story. Because most of the comeyahs don’t know the history of this town, my mission is to [tell them] why this town is so significant.”
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