Jacksonville vicinity, Cherokee County
Earliest county school records indicate that the Pine Grove School was in operation by at least 1885, serving African American students in this part of rural Cherokee County. One teacher taught all grades in a community schoolhouse. After World War I, a growing student population led authorities to apply to the Julius Rosenwald Fund, from which they secured funding to help build a new schoolhouse. Completed in 1926, the two-teacher type school was enlarged in 1935-36 to make room for two more teachers. Pine Grove, which produced a number of students who went on to very successful careers, operated as a segregated institution until it closed in 1968 and merged with the New Hope school district. (2001)