A list: The 1950s and State School Building Authority

Burgess Landrum, now known as Jenkins County Elementary, was built in Millen under the State School Building Authority. It opened in 1956.

This is a list, as best is currently researched, as to what was built during the 1950s by the State School Building Authority.

The list is a complicated one. Some locally funded building projects are included, but only if they were built at the same time as the rest of the State School Building Authority projects. That means that Eastside Elementary, which opened in 1951 in Lumpkin County, is not credited as Lumpkin County’s building program completed in 1957.  Lavonia’s black elementary is included as it was part of the larger Franklin County program.

Schools with an asterisk are buildings that were proposed, but unproven as to whether they actually went up.

Not all systems have been researched, or in the case of some, such as Bryan County, information about the building program has not been found.

NEW SCHOOLS OR MAJOR ADDITIONS

How Georgia reacted to teen marriage

We want to get married
But we’re so young
So young
Can’t marry no one
– The Beach Boys, I’m So Young (1965)

High school marriage is not often a topic of discussion these days. As Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston announced their upcoming marriage in 2008, the New York Times cited census records for 10 years earlier, that a mere one percent 15- to 17-year-old boys and girls had ever been married.

Outside of MTV’s “16 and Pregnant” television series, the idea of marriage at such an age seems bizarre. In 2015, the average age for first marriage was 27 for women and 29 for men, ages that have been on the rise for several years.

A few generations ago, marriage at a young age was much more common. In 1950, the average man married for the first time at 22, the average woman at 20. The numbers were the same in 1960, with slight fluctuation. The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, in a 1973 study, said 7.2 percent of females aged 15-17 were wed.

With kids marrying so young and much more often, it is natural that it was a concern for school systems. Students were staying in school longer and Georgia systems were adding 12th grade, hopefully keeping their charges at their desks until they were 18.

Brewton school saga, Part III: Albatross

Dr. B.D. Perry school opened in 1958 in Laurens County, six years after Laurens County’s school building program began. It opened two years after black students in eastern Laurens County were denied use of Brewton School.

Brewton School had been a white school building, but Laurens officials with state approval planned on remodeling it and enlarging it for use by black students. Brewton’s white students were going to be abandoning the building for the new East Laurens High, an all-grades building that opened in April 1956.

Despite Brewton’s updates being 90 percent complete, builders were forced to stop. Part of one wing was being built on private property. Local Brewtonians, who admitted they did not want black students in that school, now had their wish.

Brewton school saga, Part II: Opposition

When East Laurens opened in April 1956, all school children from Brewton, plus all the high school students from Condor and Wilkes moved into the new building. Wilkes’ high school had combined with Brewton at the start of the 1955-56 school year, a consolidation known as Brewton-Wilkes High.

Laurens County was still in the middle of a building program and black schools were being erected at Dudley (Millville) and a few miles south of Dublin (Mary Fleming). With Brewton now vacated, work could also finish on the building there, which was being renovated and remodeled for a third all-grades black school.

The location of another white high school in the Rentz area had been debated some time, with one court case decided and its appeal hanging in the balance.

Rentz, however, was joined by a newer and bigger problem in Laurens County: Brewton.