Nondenominational Church in St. George, SC

ST. GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC/AP) - A part of history in St. George that was set to be bulldozed now has a bright future.

The Rosenwald School in St. George was a building many people may never have been aware of, but it was one of thousands across the south that educated black children during segregation. It opened in 1925 and closed in 1954, eventually falling into an extreme state of disrepair with a caving ceiling, deteriorating floors and chipped, peeling walls.

But a group of former students got together and came up with a plan to save their historic upper Dorchester County school. The newly renovated St. George Rosenwald School will officially become a museum and community center.

It was in schools like the Dorchester County site, and nearly 5,000 others built in the American South a century ago, that Black students largely ignored by whites in power gained an educational foundation through the generosity of a Jewish businessman who could soon be memorialized with a national park.

They are now called Rosenwald Schools in honor of Julius Rosenwald, a part-owner and eventual president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., who teamed up with African American educator and leader Booker T. Washington to create the program to share the expenses of schools for Black children with the community.

There was no public transportation for the school’s students so most had to walk to school except for the lucky few, like Ordie Brown, who caught a ride on a donated bus.

“My father was fortunate enough to buy an old school bus and by getting that bus, I was able to drive that bus from the St. Mark community, bringing children from there, here to this school,” Brown said.

Rosenwald School historian Andrew Feiler says every county in the state had at least one Rosenwald School. Some had up to five. With no public transportation, attempts were made to place the schools in central, accessible locations.

Rosenwald gave $1,500 to each school; the remainder of the cost of each school had to be split between the Black community and local governments. For the Black community, cash, land, material or labor could count as their contribution, Feiler said.

“The leaders of this program reached out to the Black communities of the south and they said, ‘If you would contribute to the schools, because we want you to be a full partner in your progress.’” Feiler said.

Ralph James attended first and second grade at the school and now serves as chairman of the group of seven responsible for restoring the school to repair a caved ceiling, decayed floor and chipped, peeling walls.

“It’s a center of hope. It’s a center of encouragement,” James said. “It inspired us in spite of the odds and challenges we faced.”

The 76-year-old retired municipal judge has made it his life’s goal to restore his old school.

“Education has always been the key to success. Julius Rosenwald gave us that key,” James said.

The six-classroom building will now serve as a museum, historic site, field trip venue and community gathering place for years to come. When visitors walk inside, they will see some of the original floors and some of the original student desks.

The building will feature memorabilia from the school including yearbooks, homemade band uniforms, major red uniforms, and pictures of graduating classes.

State Sen. John Mathews secured $65,000 in state funding while the group raised around $4 million for the project on their own.

“This community came together in a great way to make this project work,” U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn said. “This is the kind of thing that brings people together, and I’m so pleased that they are preserving this history.”

The St. George school was one of the larger ones with six classrooms and an auditorium. Most schools only had one or two classrooms. More than a third of America’s Black children in the first half of the 20th century were educated in a Rosenwald school.

Other Rosenwald schools have been converted into senior centers, town halls, special event venues or restaurants. Many remain recognizable by the careful plans Rosenwald approved. Tall windows oriented to the east and west assured an abundance of natural light and ventilation in rural areas where electricity often didn’t reach until after the Great Depression.

In St. George, the vision isn’t just restoring the school, but providing a sense of the thriving African American neighborhood surrounding it during segregation. Businesses including a grocery store, barber shop and pool hall benefitted the Black community.

Inside the restored school, two classrooms look almost as they did 70 years ago. Another classroom is a public meeting room. The auditorium has been turned into a multipurpose space and will have exhibits detailing the school’s history and hands-on science displays, James said.

“You can feel what it was like just like I did,” he said.

A grand opening is planned for September.

Copyright 2023 WCSC. All rights reserved.

ST. GEORGE — The tiny town in northwest Dorchester County might be getting some new next-door neighbors, and more, in one residential influx than it has ever seen before.

If approved by the county, a "cluster" housing development proposed by the D.R. Horton, a national builder, would bring more than 330 new homes and a new zoning designation for roughly 300 rural acres near the "Town of Friendly People."

While the development would land on Sugar Hill Road outside town limits, St. George would provide water to the development while Dorchester County Water and Sewer would provide sewer services, said Kiera Reinertsen, the county's planning director. The development would also add an estimated 100 students to Dorchester School District Four and draw on services and amenities from St. George’s Fire Station Nine, Davis-Bailey Park and the town’s library.

“We’ve never had this many houses come in at one time since I’ve been here,” said Mayor Kevin Hart, who has lived in the town for 35 years.

The 2.8-square-mile town is home to roughly 1,800 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Now the county seat, St. George was originally called George’s Station as a stop along the South Carolina Railroad, now Norfolk Southern. It was incorporated in 1875.

“We haven’t had a housing development like this in this area before. There’s no way we can stop them, but we have to make plans. We won’t know it works until we see how it goes,” Hart said. "... Some want to keep our small-town feeling. It’s a tough battle, and we knew it was coming. You can see the progress coming all way up Highway 78. Harleyville is having the same challenge as St. George.

“We’ve got to hope and pray our best laid plans go well for our little town.”

Described as “America’s largest home builder” on its web site, with operations in 45 markets nationwide and 1 million homes constructed since its inception in 1978, D.R. Horton wants to change zoning for the property for the proposed development from agricultural residential, which allows one-acre home lots, to single family residential (R-1), which reduces lot sizes to a third of an acre.

The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season could be “extremely active,” cautioned researchers from Colorado State University.

They predict 23 named storms will form in the Atlantic during the 2024 season, with 11 of those developing into hurricanes, according to an initial forecast released April 4. They also predict a higher chance of a major hurricane making landfall on the East Coast.

The leading factors behind the forecast are warmer Atlantic waters and a developing La Niña phenomenon, both of which create conditions favorable to hurricane formation, the researchers reported.

Water temperatures in the eastern-central tropical and subtropical regions of the Atlantic Ocean already are much warmer than normal for the spring.

“We're experiencing temperatures that we typically tend to see towards June or July already,” said Isaac Schluesche, a researcher working on the forecast. He noted these are the warmest temperatures on record for this time of year.

The warming will continue into hurricane season, which runs June 1-Nov. 30.

“A very warm Atlantic favors an above-average season, since a hurricane’s fuel source is warm ocean water,” the forecast press release stated.

Current El Niño conditions are expected to develop into La Niña conditions by peak hurricane season, August to October, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center.

Both El Niño and La Niña are naturally occurring climate patterns. El Niño is influenced by warmer Pacific waters and tends to lead to wet winters and increased flooding in the Southeast. La Niña is influenced by cooler Pacific waters and tends to lead to drought in the Southeast and encourage above-average hurricane activity.

DORCHESTER COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - The Dorchester County Council is looking at a proposal to rezone 300 acres of land in St. George through using a new process.

The rezone ask is to allow for clusters of homes and create a high-density neighborhood at the old St. George Country Club property. Monday, the topic appeared on the agenda only as an informational meeting within the planning committee.

Committee Chair Dave Chinnis says the informational meeting a the committee level first is a somewhat new step in the process.

“One of the things that we seem to always do is give everything a first reading automatically. But we also had questions so then we get a second reading, and we ask questions, and we weren’t getting answers. To a third reading, which was ultimately when we were making the decision to pass or not to pass to zone or not rezone something,” Chinnis says.

Walking through that process, Chinnis says the lack of preparation didn’t make much sense to him. Talking with a Charleston County Council acquaintance, he decided to adopt one of their steps for large proposals - like the 300 acres in St. George. Thus, the informational meeting now happens before coming to council, to make future readings and public hearings even clearer on the details.

“I believe this St. George project is probably only the second maybe the third that we’ve had this,” Chinnis says.

Chinnis says this process will hopefully benefit everyone with an interest in a project. At the old St. George Country Club, the land is zoned agricultural, which allows for building houses on one-acre plots. The developer wants to change that to one-third acre plots but is promising to include green space. Chinnis says he’s already been able to nail down what that green space will be.

“I know in this case, we talked about open space being accessible, like community parks, pocket parks, so the people living in this neighborhood can go to their local park,” Chinnis says.

Chinnis says this is only the earliest stage of the major proposal, and there will be three full council readings, including a public hearing in the future. Now, he believes, those discussions will have more answers readily available when the public or council asks questions.

“The public gets input on everything. Sometimes there’s reasonable concerns. A property owner has certain rights, just like the person speaking has rights on their property. That property owner has rights on what they can and can’t do to their property and balancing that is always the challenge,” Chinnis says.

Chinnis says the public hearing for the 300-acre old St. George Country Club re-zone request will be at the St. George chambers, and the date will be posted 15 days ahead of time.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

SAINT GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC) - A Dorchester County industrial park in the works for over 15 years is soon to be completed and will provide many more jobs and access to products for the area.

Winding Woods is a 1,300-acre industrial park in Saint George and Port 95 is a private development within the park. Port 95 will serve as distribution and manufacturing centers for different companies.

Crews are anticipating three buildings to be a part of Port 95, but they are currently completing construction on the first two. One of these buildings will be one million square feet, making it one of the largest buildings in the Charleston region.

This giant building can hold anywhere from one to four companies alone. The second building is about 240,000 square feet and will hold just one company.

This project in its entirety cost $100 million and was privately funded. They have yet to lease the spaces out, but Dorchester County Director of Economic Development John Truluck says they have many prospective companies. He said they have had an encouraging amount of people come to scope the buildings out, but nothing has been finalized yet.

Truluck says they are excited for this project to be completed.

“It has sort of been a field of dreams for Dorchester County to build it,” he says, “So it’s always interesting you know, when the first 10 years of this, everything has been below the surface, but now when you start to see something go vertical, it gets exciting, because that’s real and then everybody else in the community can now see it.”

They first broke ground on this project in October 2022 and are looking at anticipated completion at the end of the quarter. This project is a part of Dorchester County Council’s strategic plan to bring more employment and tax base to areas of the county that haven’t seen growth in the past. Truluck also anticipates that the project will bring more products to the county and believes that all of this will help congestion problems on I-26 from people commuting.

“Our whole objective is to bring jobs and investment to parts of Dorchester County that haven’t had that in the past. So, we hope to fill these buildings with, with jobs so that folks that live in Saint George can also work in Saint George,” Truluck says.

Truluck says that while the physical structure is almost complete, it likely would not be until 2025 that these buildings are up and running. He says the buildings are meant to act as shells so that the companies can make the space suitable for their needs. He said this process would probably take a few months after leasing.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.

ST. GEORGE, S.C. (WCSC) - After years of neglect, community leaders and former students of a nearly-forgotten Dorchester County Rosenwald School worked together to restore the historic building to its former glory.

Ralph James and Edith Oldham are extremely proud to speak of their alma mater in upper Dorchester County. It was originally known as the St. George Colored School, and it was the first school that they ever knew.

The schoolhouse was built in 1925. At the time it was known as a Rosenwald School, one of several thousand built for Negro students across the South during the age of segregation.

Booker T. Washington, the founder and president of the Tuskegee Institute, teamed up with Julius Rosenwald, a wealthy Jewish philanthropist of his day, to build thousands of quality schoolhouses for Black children throughout the South. Rosenwald had the deep pockets but he didn’t pay for it all.

James recounted how the school came to be with a lot of support from the local community.

“The people in the community, they donated $2,000. Rosenwald donated $1,500 to each school, but the bulk of those funds really came from fish fries and bake sales,” James says.

The school stood proudly for about 40 years until newer, more modern schools were built during the integration era.

Over time, the Rosenwald School fell into disrepair. Trees and overgrowth hid it from the roadway.

After years of neglect, former students and community leaders worked together to restore the school. Millions of dollars and 10 years later, the school is back and is now a sought-after venue for civic meetings and social events. There are even plans for a children’s museum.

Oldham calls the renovation a gift to the next generation.

“We need the youth to be interested in getting involved. Because this is their history,” Oldham says.

James says the Dorchester County schoolhouse is one of the largest Rosenwald Schools that’s preserved originally in the southeast.

“We’re very happy and proud of that fact that here in the rural area of St. George, you’re able to present a jewel to the state of South Carolina and hopefully, nationally,” James says.

Copyright 2024 WCSC. All rights reserved.