MIDWAY – Ninety years to the day the Dorchester Academy’s boys dormitory was dedicated to the school’s first female principal, it now bears her name.
Descendants of Dorchester grads and family members of Elizabeth B. Moore unveiled the marker naming the building the Elizabeth B. Moore Hall last weekend.
“Today, we are declaring to the world this is the Elizabeth Benton Moore Memorial Hall and as long as we speak her name, she will live forever,” said Rose Stevens Mullice.
The unveiling, held in conjunction with Women’s History Month, honored the school’s leader from 1925-32. Moore died January 27, 1932, in Savannah, but under her leadership, the school’s curriculum expanded.
Raised by her uncle Rev. George Washington Moore and her aunt Ella Sheppard Moore, who performed with the Fisk Jubilee Singers, from the time she was 4, Elizabeth Moore attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. There, she was a classmate of W.E.B. Dubois.
“That story, the story of the possibilities of education, the story of Black resilience, the story of Black determination, are in full view today,” said Dr. Crystal D. Gregory, a professor at Bethune-Cookman University.
Dorchester Academy was founded in 1870 by the American Missionary Association to educate Black children. It grew to an enrollment of 300 students, drawing Black children from beyond Liberty County, until it was closed. It was also the first school in the state to have a 12th grade. Schools in Georgia only went as far as 11th grade at the time.
The restored boys dormitory building has a place in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a frequent visitor.
“Project C,” the 1963 plan to end segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, was developed at Dorchester, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference used Dorchester Academy to train teachers and leaders at school, showing Blacks how to register to vote. It is one of the stops on the National Civil Rights Trail.
Elizabeth Moore was Julie Alexander Nixon’s grandmother’s cousin, and Nixon – a flight attendant with Delta Airlines – attended Saturday morning’s ceremony. Nixon’s father had his own career in education, teaching others to fly at his flight school.
“Being able to witness my family’s history in education is just so profound,” she said. “I am so honored and grateful to be here.”
The Dorchester Academy campus, which had grown to eight buildings, was destroyed in a 1932 fire. The American Missionary Association rebuilt only the boys dormitory. It was completed in 1935 and dedicated to Moore.
“This was a state of the art building,” Mullice said. “It was brick, and we lived in clapboard houses.”
Mullice’s mother was a member of the last graduating class in 1940. Many of the students walked to the school. Her mother and her uncle played basketball at the school. Her grandfather, who had a horse and buggy, took them to school.
Part of the event was the kickoff for the annual Walk to Dorchester, which raises money to preserve the Dorchester Academy.
The Walk to Dorchester started 25 years ago under the leadership of Bill Austin. Austin’s grandmother walked 9.5 miles a day, each day, to go to school.
“It has been a family thing,” said Dr. Clemontine Washington, the current president of the Dorchester Academy Improvement Association. “Everybody got behind Bill Austin. You have to have a team, and he created a team.”
Washington listed the improvements to the site, and especially the renovation of the auditorium, in detailing what the money raised has accomplished at Dorchester Academy.
“You can see what we have done with this money,” she said. “And I am praying to the Lord we can raise $125,000, but we can’t do it without you.”
The annual Walk to Dorchester will be held June 21, beginning from Briar Bay Park at 9 a.m. and ending 9.5 miles later at Dorchester Academy.