Sewanee Elementary School is a

public In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichkei ...

coeducational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to t ...

Elementary School A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

Sewanee, Tennessee Sewanee () is a census-designated place (CDP) in Franklin County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 2,535 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Tullahoma, Tennessee Micropolitan Statistical Area. Sewanee is best known as the home of ...

that played a significant role during the

integration Integration may refer to: Biology *Multisensory integration *Path integration * Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome *DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...

of Tennessee Public Schools in the 1960s.

Description

Sewanee Elementary School is an elementary school for grades kindergarten through year five and is in the

Franklin County, Tennessee Franklin County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is located on the eastern boundary of Middle Tennessee in the southern part of the state. As of the 2010 census, the population was 41,052. Its county seat is Winchester. Franklin ...

school district. It resides within the domain of the

University of the South The University of the South, familiarly known as Sewanee (), is a private Episcopal liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, and its School of Theology is an official seminary of ...

and serves

Sewanee Sewanee may refer to: * Sewanee, Tennessee * Sewanee: The University of the South * ''The Sewanee Review'', an American literary magazine established in 1892 * Sewanee Natural Bridge * Saint Andrews-Sewanee School See also * Suwanee (disambiguati ...

and nearby communities. It is housed in a 1926 sandstone main building with red-brick additions made in subsequent years. For each grade, there are typically two classes.

History

The Sewanee Elementary School was founded in 1926 with the dedication of the present main school building. However, the school traces it antecedents to 1867 when the first public school was built on the mountain by Jabez Wheeler Hayes, an Episcopalian from New Jersey. Along with Hayes’ school, Saint-Paul’s-On-The-Mountain, over time various other area schools were combined into Sewanee Elementary School including the school on Billy Goat Hill, the school for African-American children, and the

Sherwood, Tennessee Sherwood is an unincorporated community in Franklin County, Tennessee, United States. It is located along Tennessee State Route 56 southeast of Winchester, and just north of the Alabama state line. Sherwood has a post office with ZIP code 37376. ...

elementary school.

Desegregation

Since its inception, the school had been segregated and only attended by white children. African-American children attended a separate school nearby. In the early 1960s, members of the Sewanee community begin petitioning

to integrate the school. In 1964, the

County A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

lost an integration suit filed by eight families. This case was significant since it involved both white and African-American plaintiffs.Recalling my Town’s Desegregation Battles
Retrieved January 25, 2014]

Tennessee Historical Commission Marker

To commemorate the desegregation, on January 19, 2014, a

Tennessee Historical Commission The Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) is the State Historic Preservation Office for the U.S. state of Tennessee. Headquartered in Nashville, it is an independent state agency, administratively attached to the Department of Environment and Con ...

marker was dedicated at the school.

The text of the marker reads

File:Sewanee Public Desegregation Sign Front.jpg, Marker front File:Sewanee Public School Desegregation Sign Rear Otey Parish.JPG, Marker rear with Otey Parish in the background File:Sewanee_Public_School_Desegregation_Sign_Panoramic.JPG, Panoramic of the school and Otey Parish church File:Sewanee_Public_School_Desegregation_Sign_Rear_School_Building.JPG, School with Marker

References

External links

* http://www.edline.net/pages/Sewanee_Elementary_School {{Coord, 35.197303, -85.921200, display=title Public elementary schools in Tennessee Sewanee, Tennessee