View inside the restored Laurel Grove School

Photograph taken by Jim Cox.

2004

Laurel Grove Cemetery

The Laurel Grove cemetery is behind what was the Laurel Grove Baptist Church that burned down in 2003.

This photograph was taken by Jim Cox.

2004

View inside the restored Laurel Grove School

This photograph was taken by Jim Cox.

2004

View inside the restored Laurel Grove School

This photograph was taken by Jim Cox.

2004

View of the Laurel Grove cemetery

This photograph was taken by Jim Cox.

2004

View of the Laurel Grove cemetery

This photograph was taken by Jim Cox.

2004

Statistics from Historical Background

Chart for Images (worksheet)

To help students think about these images, you can expand on the categories in the chart as follows:

Notice or observations: What do you notice? What symbols do you see?

Question: What do you want to know more about when you see the image?

What was segregation: How is this an example of segregation? What was the goal of segregation?

Eleanor Greene and the Laurel Grove School curriculum project

"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was an African American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though some of his writing used a Negro dialect, other writing does not use dialect. These more traditional poems have become of greater interest to scholars. This poem first appeared in Dunbar's first professionally published volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life, (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1896).

We Wear the Mask" is reprinted from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Paul Laurence Dunbar (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1913).

1913

Thomas Chatmon, interview

One example of “the extraordinary resilience of black citizens, who individually and collectively found ways to endure, fight back and occasionally define their own destinies…”

Thomas Chatmon was born in 1919 and interviewed in 1994 at the age of 75 in Albany, Georgia.

William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, Robert Korstad eds., Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (New York: New Press, 2001)

1994