Georgia
Department of the Georgia Academy of the Blind for the Colored Race (Macon)
- Established 1882
- Integrated with the Georgia Academy for the Blind, 1965, 1981
After African-American parents pushed for the admission of their children to the Georgia Academy for the Blind, the school appealed to the legislature for funding, arguing that the original Academy had been "chartered and erected before the emancipation of the colored race and their elevation into the condition of citizenship." Segregated facilities were essential because "the precedents in similar circumstances, the instincts of race and the provisions of the law would alike oppose the intermingling of the pupils of the two races in the same classes and rooms."1 $10,000 from the legislature, plus $3,500 from the Academy paid for the construction of a new building about half a mile from the main school. The Grand Master of the Macon lodges of Colored Free and Accepted Masons laid the cornerstone; the elaborate ceremony attracted "a large attendance, consisting of citizens, various Lodges of the different Orders of the race and their military companies." Although the new school was built to accommodate forty students, only six enrolled in its first year, 1882-1883. The superintendent attributed the lack of students to "ignorance of methods, and the means of transportation, and, perhaps, from the want of influential friends to aid and advise."2
A plan for gradual integration of the white and negro divisions of the schools was approved by the State Board of Education in 1965, following passages of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. At the same time the school's mission was expanded to include training for multi-disabled children. Integration was delayed until renovation and new construction at the Academy's main campus was completed. Not until 1981 did the former Colored School building close and all the Academy's programs were consolidated on one site.
- Twenty-Ninth Annual Report of the Georgia Academy for the Blind, 1880
- Quoted by Otis H. Stephens, A History of the Georgia Academy for the Blind, 2008.