With the overwhelming endorsement of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the election of Abraham Lincoln to a second term in 1863, a foregone conclusion was that the stage was set for the complete elimination of physical slavery. Still in question, however, was what to do with four million newly freed depraved slaves? Clearly, one philosophy held that there was simply no way for Colored and Whites to co-exist as equals in these United States. Another, was that what served other ethnic groups migrating to this country should likewise serve freed Colored people. The American Missionary Association subscribed to this philosophy of which the substance was EDUCATION. Education not for subordination, rather Freedom and Liberation-for the most deprived - for the fullest development of man and womanhood.
In Ante-Bellum days, the State of Georgia forbade the teaching of reading and writing to black people. But soon after the Civil War, 1868, the American Missionary Association, now part of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, started a primary school and Congregational Church for free men in Midway, Georgia.
During Reconstruction (under military rule), William A Golding, a black member of the Georgia Legislature and a member and selectman in the Midway Congressional Church, wrote to the AMA to request a teacher for the school which was preferably southern born and colored, a young man of good moral character and a preacher if possible. The AMA sent Eliza Ann Ward, an abolitionist from Manson, Massachusetts. She opened a school in "Golding's Grove" with an average daily attendance of 28-22 males and 17 females. In 1872, Floyd Snelson, a former slave who ministered and taught at the AMA's Andersonville, Georgia school and did further study at Atlanta University, was hired to come to Liberty County to promote Congressionalism and foster the school. In 1879, the school prospered under his leadership and was enlarged to provide secondary education for freedman for the first time in Liberty County. It was named Dorchester Academy, referring back to the original home of the first settlers in Midway. The Academy was both a boarding and a day school. Not only the children of freedmen, but also by parents and grandparents, attended it.
In the early 60's M. L. King, Jr. and other civil rights workers, from many parts of the country, convened at the Dorchester Center. For several years King traveled to the black-owned and operated Dorchester Center. King and his instructors used the center to train thousands of teachers in basics of voter education and non-violent social change. King and his staff met and slept in the building once used as a boy's dormitory during the Academy years. It was here that strategies for the 1963 Birmingham, AL march were formulated. For King, the Dorchester Center, and another one in Frogmore, S.C., was a haven, somewhere they felt safe and protected.
In 2006, the United States Department of the Interior named Dorchester Academy a National Historical Landmark. In 2007, The Board of Directors names Deborah Robinson Curator of the Historical Dorchester Academy and Museum.
Born in Oklahoma City, Mrs. Robinson graduated from Dillard University with a B.A. in Music and a M.A. from Columbia University. She is a Retired Educator with over 36 years of teaching experience.
Initiated into Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. at Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana in the spring of 1950, Mrs. Robinson is a Golden Soror and a charter member of the Nu Rho Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. in Hinesville, GA. Currently, Mrs. Robinson is an Historian for Liberty County and Nu Rho Omega Chapter.
Article by: Delandria Smith
