Many African American children from the eastside spent their first school years on the campus of what is now Savannah State University (SSU). They attended an elementary laboratory school where teachers-in-training and education professors used innovative techniques and a progressive curriculum. Originally known as the College Training School, the school was established in 1894 by the Savannah-Chatham County Board of Education. The school grew from a one-teacher school in 1925 to a faculty of three or four who taught six grades by the 1930s. In the 1931-1932 academic year, for example, 179 students enrolled in the school’s six grades, including thirty-nine girls and boys from East Savannah and eight children from LePageville.
Although the College Training School was a county public school managed by the Board of Education, the school’s location on the SSU campus and its function as a teacher training facility also tied it to the college. In 1935, the school officially became a joint venture; it was still part of the public school system but the college appointed the teaching faculty. This new development nearly coincided with the school’s move into a new brick building on campus. When that building was named Powell Hall in 1934, in memory of a former college instructor, the College Training School gradually assumed the name of Powell Laboratory School.
What set Powell Laboratory School apart from many elementary schools of the 1940s and 1950s was its commitment to “challenging and enriching experiences” for its students. One first grade class, for example, studied animals by making their own zoo, complete with paper lions and giraffes. Older children participated in science experiments to see how rain was made. Such innovative lessons no doubt accounted for the fact that Powell Laboratory School was one of eleven county schools accredited in 1952 and one of only three African American schools so honored.
To alleviate overcrowding and end double sessions, the Board of Education opened a new building for Powell Laboratory School in Thunderbolt, which became the elementary wing of the new Sol C. Johnson School. Leaving the SSU campus in 1957 was bittersweet, but the tradition of Powell Laboratory School continued in the kindergarten and nursery school operated by the college. Both pre-school programs continued as laboratory schools, allowing student teachers to work to improve children’s cognitive development and social skills. When the kindergarten and nursery school closed in 1994, it brought to an end one hundred years of childhood education on the campus of Savannah State University.
Willie Hill Powell
Vanishing Georgia Collection, CTM-96.
Courtesy of the Georgia Archives.
Willie Hill Powell distinguished herself as a well-known civic and church leader in Savannah during the early twentieth century. She was a member of the Toussaint L’Ouverture Chapter of the American Red Cross and is pictured in this 1918 photograph in the back row, first person on the right. Appointed in 1911 as the first home economics instructor at Georgia State Industrial College (now Savannah State University), she taught at the college for nine years. When she died tragically in a car accident in 1934, the new building occupied by the College Training School was renamed Powell Hall in her memory.
Powell Hall
Photograph by Geoff L. Johnson.
Courtesy of the City of Savannah Cultural Affairs Department.
Powell Hall, located on Alexis Circle at Savannah State University, serves as the most tangible reminder of the laboratory school’s importance to the campus.
Report Card, College Training School
Courtesy of Janie Baker Bowers.
Janie Baker Bowers brought home good grades from the College Training School for the 1935-1936 academic year. A second-grader in Miss Carrie Adams’ class, she was a hard-working and well-behaved girl who was never tardy and seldom absent. At the end of the year, Miss Adams acknowledged her efforts with the words, written in flowing cursive, “Promoted to 3rd Grade.”
College Training School students at recess
Hubertonian 1941, 36.
Courtesy of Charles J. Elmore.
Recess for College Training School students in 1941 meant a chance to play games on the grounds near Powell Hall.
Children on stage at Sol C. Johnson School
Courtesy of Virginia Blalock.
Children of Powell Laboratory Wing of the new Sol C. Johnson School perform in the 1960s.
Kindergarten pupils play ring around the rosey
Early Childhood Development Center Scrapbook, Compiled by Ernestine Lang.
Courtesy of Ernestine Lang.
In 1967, kindergarten pupils and their teachers enjoy a round of “ring around the rosey’ in front of Hill Hall on the Savannah State University campus.
Ernestine Lang and child
1975 Savannah State College Tiger.
Courtesy of Ernestine Lang.
Ernestine Lang, Director of the Early Childhood Development Center, assists a nursery school student in 1975.
