MIDWAY — With the sounds of birds and insects accompanying a humid mid-June morning, dozens of walkers trekked to keep a piece of history alive for future generations.
The 25th annual Walk to Dorchester was held Saturday, as walkers trod the nine miles from Briar Bay Park outside of Riceboro to Dorchester Academy just outside of Midway. For many, it was the same walk their predecessors made decades ago, just to go to school.
The walk is personal for Eugene Dryer, who travels from Hampton, just south of Atlanta, to take part.
“Most of the people in my family who have high school diplomas and are elderly got their diplomas here at Dorchester,” he said, “including my mother. So as a result, I walk for them.”
Dryer has walked 24 of the 25 years the event has been held. He missed one year after spraining an ankle, hitting a “gopher hole when I was playing golf,” he said.
The money raised from the walk goes toward preserving Dorchester Academy, which not only was an acclaimed school but later a focal point in the American civil rights movement. After the books and desks were closed for good, it became a spot where leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Ralph Abernathy and Andrew Young convened. It was there they formed Project C, which later became the 1963 marches in Birmingham, Alabama.
Now a retired teacher, Andra Harris grew up in the Midway area. His parents, the late Sam and Gladyse Harris, were respected and admired educators in Liberty County.
“It’s very, very valuable because it shows the importance this school had to the residents who are living in this area of Liberty County,” Harris said of the Walk to Dorchester. “This was the first place African-American students could come and learn. Even though many of their parents may not have had the same opportunities, they wanted to make sure their kids had that opportunity.”
Before the school closed in 1940, it was the first school in the state to have a 12th grade — all other schools stopped at 11th grade. Its entire senior class in 1934 was accepted into college.
Many of the school’s buildings were lost to history, but the boys dormitory remains. It was here, after the school closed and the students went elsewhere, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference conducted citizenship education programs, with the purpose of letting Blacks know how to register to vote and how to advocate for their rights.
Dryer was a caretaker at Dorchester and met many of the civil rights movement’s leaders there.
“This building has a lot of history,” he said. “When the SCLC was in its infancy, this is where they met. I knew all of them before they became famous. So it means a lot to me to keep this place going.”
Harris said the Dorchester center was his “first YMCA” and is heartened to see what the center is become. He also hopes it continues to serve a place in history for generations to come, “to make sure the know the sacrifices people make on a daily basis so that all citizens can live in a society in which they can explore academic, personal and economic opportunities,” he said.
Harris hopes there are more walks to come to support Dorchester’s mission and hopes more people learn of its place in American history.
“It’s up to people like us that when we have opportunities like this that we carry that work forward and share walks like this so more people come out to explore the museum and these hallowed grounds,” he said.
