2016 Juneteenth
Celebration
2016
June 16th - 18th
Bartow County's 3rd annual Juneteenth Celebration
June 15th -Community Juneteenth Bible Study:
6pm refreshments
7pm Bible Study
Place-Heritage Museum
June 17th-Juneteenth Festival Day 1
6pm until 9pm
Place-Summer Hill Complex
June 18th-Juneteenth Parade
10am
Juneteenth Festival Day 2
12pm until 9pm
Place-Summer Hill Complex
Please help the Summer Hill Foundation by joining the Kroger Rewards Program. . . it is free to join and free for you to help us.
The School
Established by Ronald Johnson in 1889, Summer Hill School was a wood framed Rosenwald structure of white clapboard with only a few rooms. Summer Hill School opened its doors with only 55 students from grades one 1 - 8
After the higher grades were added, the lower grades remained in the old building and grades 9-12 were moved to the new building at the bottom of the hill which was named Summer Hill High School. Summer Hill High School was the only high school that blacks could attend during this period in Bartow County. Renovated and reopened to the public, the Summer Hill Complex now has a museum.
The Community
The Summer Hill community included black entrepreneurs and businesses, social and civic organizations, the Summer Hill PTA, churches and Slab Stadium which hosted black baseball teams and served as a business anchor to the community.
The Experience
The Students mostly learned from the worn out books they could not take home to study. Jim Crow laws forced blacks to live "behind the veil" in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois and Civil Rights was mostly a civil fight. But through it all, this village - Summer Hill - raised happy, intelligent and culturally diverse people who have a rich history to tell.