Pleasant Grove School was significant in education and ethnic heritage. one of the oldest surviving purpose-built schools for black students in Clarendon County, South Carolina, and the only surviving pre-war school in the rule Alcolu community. The significance began in 1933 when the black community in Alcolu purchased land and built the school through volunteer fundraising efforts and ended with the school closure in 1953.
Pleasant Grove was a segregated school serving black children during the Jim Crow era and operated in the Clarendon County, white-run school, District. Functioning as a community hub, Pleasant Grove school had a basketball court a baseball field behind the building.
The school closed in 1953, at that time 159 students were enrolled.
The Pleasant Grove School along with other small real schools were replaced by South Carolina’s school equalization program. A state effort to preserve segregated public education. Pleasant Grove School is emblematic of how African Americans pursued civil rights in the early 20th century within the structures of white supremacy.
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