Event teaches about Houston Co. education

“Georgia’s most progressive county” has certainly been progressive when it comes to education, and the public will get a chance to hear about it at a History of Education in Houston County presentation Monday.

Ellie Loudermilk, president of the Perry Historical Society and a retired educator with 30 years experience, will give the

presentation.

“There was a group, Delta Kappa Gamma, that asked me to give a history. That was several years ago. We put together a presentation, and it’s grown since that time,” Loudermilk said.

While the county was formed in 1821, the first mention of education was in 1822, Loudermilk said.

“It [the presentation] starts with the founding of the county and where the state stood with education,” she said. “Education here starts out with school fund and academies, grows into one- and two-room school houses, then to the public school system in 1889, then forward from the public school system.”

Currently there are 38 schools in the Houston County School System, and Loudermilk said half of the presentation is dedicated to the history of those schools, such as when they were built and why we now have free textbooks and transportation. The other half of the presentation, she said, focuses on what there was before the formal education system in place today.

“We have documented 64 one- and two-room schools, and we have a listing of all those schools and pictures of some of those schools,” Loudermilk said. “A lot of people are shocked that we had 64 of what I like to call ‘community schools.’ Just because there was no funding from the state, that didn’t excuse the people from the communities from caring that children were educated.”

The schools themselves had a lot of disparity because there was no formal educational standard. Some schools had four grades while others had eight. There were no high schools in Houston County until 1889, Loudermilk said, and no high schools across the state until 1911.

“In the early years, only men were teachers,” she said. “When the county formed, there were four things that happened. … The fourth thing that happened was a school for the boys. Girls were educated at home, or if they had lots of money, were sent to Wesleyan.”

The first girls’ school in Houston County wasn’t founded until 1854, and boys and girls remained separated in education until 1886.

Another fascinating portion of Houston County’s educational history is Rosenwald Schools, Loudermilk said.

Julius Rosenwald, who became president and part owner of the Sears, Roebuck and Company, and African-American leader Booker T. Washington, partnered up to fund what are informally known as Rosenwald Schools. The project arose to make sure black children had an education in the

disenfranchised south.

“When the school board first organized, it was nothing more than an oversight committee. It had no funds, and it took until 1914 for the state to pass taxation. It takes time to accumulate taxes,” Loudermilk said. “The first schools built by the Board of Education were Rosenwald Schools. It’s fascinating that the first schools built [by the BOE] were 11 schools for black

children.”

School boards across the south were required to put in funds for the building and maintenance of schools for black children in order to get grants for white schools. Black and white children remained separated in their education until integration in 1969.

The other interesting fact Loudermilk hopes attendees of the presentation will take away is the woman’s college in Houston County.

“It was built in 1854. I think they had in mind something like Wesleyan,” she said. “The men of the town felt they needed a woman’s college, but then a war interrupted the plans, and they never went further than one building.”

The 45-minute presentation will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 9, at the Flint Energies building on Highway 96. For more information, call 478-224-4442 or email info@perryhistoricalsociety.org.

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