Dalzell School

Front inscription

This was the site of Dalzell School, a legally white but segregated public school for the “Sumter Turks,” a dark-skinned farming community who lived in the High Hills of Sumter Co. by the early 1800s. By the 1910s Turk students attended two Benenhaley schools in Stateburg and Dalzell. Both were small, poorly furnished buildings similar to the county’s underfunded Black schools.

Reverse inscription

Around 1930 all Turk students attended Dalzell School. In 1935-36 a new 3-classroom school building was built here with support from the New Deal and staffed by white teachers. In 1950 Turk families successfully sued to gain admission to local white high schools. Later challenges opened white elementary schools to Turk students in 1961, after which Dalzell School closed.