A town hall meeting will be held at the Sardis School to address the proposed sale of the former school with significant cultural and educational history, established in 1925 by the Rosenwald Fund.
The meeting will be held Thursday, Feb. 29, at 6 p.m.
Sardis School was a segregated institution for Black students prior to the result of Brown V. the Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in 1954. The Rosenwald Fund was established by Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropist who was passionate about providing proper education to Black students.
Brittany Wimmer is a member of Unique Impressions, a Salley based nonprofit organization with a focus on identifying and solving community issues. She said there was a discussion about the school during a Salley Town Council meeting Feb. 20.
"A council member audibly said, out loud, [that] it’s a waste of time," she said. "He scoffed at it, shook his head at it.”
Wimmer said that later in the meeting, several board members agreed it would be wise to go forward with a town meeting.
Rosalyn Hicks, a Salley community member who is on several committees including Planning and Development, said that the public needs to be interested in this “because this is one of the schools that was one of the educational foundations for the African Americans that were in this community … A lot of individuals here in the town of Salley would not have had access to education had it not been for that school.”
Hicks said that she and others are trying to give a voice to elderly community members who have deep connections to the Sardis School.
“A lot of the individuals that were educated there have a vested interest in that building,” she said. “Many of the citizens that are here contributed to that school as far as being teachers, educators, students.”
She said that Sardis School was a “beacon of hope for their futures” and a “sign of resilience” to stay persistent in educational ventures.
Hicks said the public needs to speak up.
“If we collectively work together, we can all come up with a comprehensive plan to preserve this school,” she said.
