Stop 5

The One-Room Schoolhouse

Education in the early Liberia Community began atop the soapstone boulder and later inside the original church.

Unlike nearly 5,500 one-room schools across the South built with the aid of the Rosenwald Family, in the 1920s, residents built their own one-room schoolhouse without outside financial assistance — a remarkable achievement for a rural Black community during segregation.

The school served local children until state-mandated consolidation in the 1950s. Students were later bused to segregated schools until racial integration finally came to Pickens County in 1970 — the last county in South Carolina to fully integrate its schools.

The school sat empty for decades. It served as a storage room instead of a classroom. In 2024 Harper General Contractors of Greenville took on the task of rehabilitating the building as a community service project. In 2025 the school was furnished with period items.