Bamberg County · Marker 05-06
Voorhees College
at the entrance to the Voorhees College Campus, E. Voorhees Rd. (S.C. Sec. Rd. 5-12), Denmark
Front inscription
Voorhees College, founded by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright in 1897 as the Denmark Industrial School, was an effort to emphasize a vocational curriculum for rural African American students on the model of the Tuskegee Institute. The school, with funding from philanthropist Ralph Voorhees, was renamed Voorhees Industrial School for Colored Youth in 1904, Voorhees Normal and Industrial School in 1916, and Voorhees School and Junior College in 1947.
Reverse inscription
Voorhees, supported by the Episcopal Church since 1924, changed its mission during the first half of the twentieth century and in 1962 became Voorhees College. In 1967 it became a senior liberal arts college. The historic portion of the campus was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 as the Voorhees College Historic District.