By Dean Hesse
Lithonia, GA — The Arabia Mountain Heritage Alliance wants to revitalize the site of the Bruce Street School, the first Black public school in DeKalb County.
The site, now mostly ruins, is at 2449 Bruce Street in Lithonia.
The Arabia Mountain Heritage Area Alliance hosted a fundraising gala at the East DeKalb Senior Center in Lithonia on Feb. 17.
Jeff Dingler, Communications Manager at the Arabia Mountain National Heritage Area said the Bruce Street School was built in 1938 as part of a grassroots community effort.
“The school before that was called the Yellow River School, and it was burned down by the Klan, so the community came together, many of these folks worked in the quarry at Arabia Mountain, and they would bring home rocks from the quarry at the end of the day,” Dingler said. “They built this really, beautiful, architecturally unique structure, the Bruce Street School.”
According to the Alliance, the school closed in 1955 when the state Legislature, trying to avoid desegregation mandated by Brown vs. Board of Education, built “equalization schools” around the state. The students at that school were relocated across the street to the “new” Bruce Street School which is still there today and houses a police precinct. A fire damaged the old school building and it crumbled from neglect, the Alliance says.
But the site has a promising future.
“In a couple of years when the school is finished it will be transformed into an outdoor museum with an amphitheater,” Dingler said. “We’re hoping for a food forest and memory garden, things like that, so once again the community can utilize the space, have outdoor classrooms there, and just learn about the history of the Bruce Street School as well as Black education in the deep South.”
To find out more about the Bruce Street School and the Arabia Mountain National Heritage visit the website at: arabiaalliance.org
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