Discover Worcester County - I’m On My Way: Education
The Sturgis One Room School Musuem was restored and opened in downtown Pocomoke City in May 2000. |
Earlier in this century, local African-American families raised their children within the segregated educational system established throughout the state. Representative of the dozens of facilities used by black children is the Sturgis One-Room School. (Opened as a museum in 2000 it is currently located on Willow Street in downtown Pocomoke City.) Dating around 1900, the weatherboard frame structure was used for elementary grades until the Stephen Long School in Pocomoke City opened in 1937. The school has been restored and welcomes visitors on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1 -4 pm, May - October, and by appointment.
Higher education was segregated as well. Founded in 1886 under the auspices of the Delaware Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Centenary Biblical Institute of Baltimore, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne was started as a black oriented school of higher learning. Shortly after its inception, the Princess Anne Academy, as it was popularly known, was designated as part of the state land-grant educational system in order to comply with a federal mandate to offer college level education to black students. The institution continued as a private school until 1926, when the State of Maryland purchased the property outright. It was not until 1970, however, that it became a bona fide branch of the University system and named the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.
Stephen Handy Long
(Alonzo Tull) |
A sound and solid education of elementary and higher learning for all black children was one of the principal missions advanced by local educator Stephen Handy Long (1865-1921). Born in Pocomoke City at the end of the Civil War, Stephen Long grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Stephen Long returned to the lower Eastern Shore and began his teaching career in Somerset County. He eventually became the principal of the Pocomoke Grammar School on Bank and Fifth Streets. In 1914 he became the first African-American school supervisor in Worcester County. Long initiated several model programs for black youth. Tragically, he was murdered on September 13, 1921, in a conflict surrounding his desire to ensure that orphan boys used as farm laborers received the education to which they were entitled. He is buried in the Hall's Hill Cemetery. A service organization, the Stephen H. Long Guild, Inc., was formed in 1980 to provide financial assistance for the education of African-American youngsters.
Mt. Zion One Room School
Copywriting by Paul Touart
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