This weekend’s Willow Hill Heritage Festival marks the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Willow Hill School with a breakfast symposium Saturday recognizing African American soldiers from Bulloch County and the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act with a Gospel Festival on Sunday spotlighting an original Freedom Singer.
The place will, of course, be the Willow Hill Heritage & Renaissance Center, occupying the extant 1950s building and campus of the Willow Hill School, which was founded 1874 by formerly enslaved families for their children. The two-day festival will open with the 8:30 a.m. symposium Saturday, Aug. 31, and continue into the afternoon with museum tours, an available lunch and opportunities to take part in the center’s archival project. Then the Gospel Festival is scheduled for 4 p.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 1, but the center will open at 2 p.m. that day, also for museum tours and archival contributions.
“In celebration of the 150 years, it also coincides with 60 years of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, so our focus this year is on the fight for civil rights,” said Dr. Nkenge Jackson-Flowers, Willow Hill Center board secretary. “Our main program on Saturday will focus on the African American soldiers of Bulloch County, Georgia, fighting for all rights in the United States but also their own personal rights.”
Featured speakers
The program of speakers for the 8:30 a.m. Saturday symposium includes Maxine Bryant, Ph.D., director of the Gullah-Geechee Heritage Center and senior lecturer in the Department of Criminal Justice at Georgia Southern University; Brian Feltman, Ph.D., professor of history, also at Georgia Southern; Johnette Brooks, who has done her own research on the topic; and Georgia Southern public history graduate student Lawrence Heber, now interning with the Willow Hill Center.
Bryant, “will expand the experience of those African American soldiers,” said Jackson-Flowers. Feltman has a “Fallen Soldiers” project, focusing on soldiers who died in World War I, and Jackson-Flowers said a conversation with him earlier this year led to the subject of the symposium, as Feltman sought information and pictures of local African American soldiers of the period.
“He reached out to us … and we thought about the fact that this is an untold story in Bulloch County,” said Jackson Flowers.
Archival project
Heber’s internship is funded under the two-year, $92,000 grant the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a federal agency, awarded the Willow Hill Center in 2023 for ongoing work to digitize and expand its collection of printed and written programs from African American funerals dating from the 1940s forward.
“He’s also using the collection to find out more about the African American soldiers in Bulloch County who served in World War II,” she said.
A light “continental” breakfast will be provided by the Willow Hill Center for symposium attendees. All of the weekend’s events and activities are free and open to the public. But lunch on Saturday and a Sunday afternoon to evening meal, both prepared by Mosley Farms, will be available for purchase.
Both afternoons, festival attendees will have an opportunity to provide materials for the Willow Hill Heritage & Renaissance Center’s archival scanning work or observe this being done. Members of the archival team will be there Saturday to explain their work and talk to individuals about how to use the collection.
Additionally, the team will be prepared to do oral history recordings, particularly about soldiers and other military veterans, to add these to the center’s extensive collection of recorded interviews pertaining to regional African American history.
“We want the public to bring in artifacts, photographs, historical information so that the museum can make copies and return the artifacts to them,” said Dr. Alvin Jackson, the Willow Hill Center’s board president.
The center also accepts some original artifacts as it seeks to serve as a community repository for this material. But originals of items such as the funeral programs that can be scanned will be returned to their owners who wish to keep them, he said.
“Also to highlight this event, anyone who served in the military from Bulloch County, we welcome people to attend and share their own personal stories or stories of family members,” said Jackson-Flowers.
Freedom gospel
Sunday’s Gospel Festival will honor the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with music heard during marches, mass meetings and demonstrations before and after the act’s passage. Rutha Mae Harris, now 83, who was one of the original Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Freedom Singers, and her niece Angie Gibson are slated to sing many of the songs of the Civil Rights Movement.
Additionally, Muarlean Edwards, who as a child participated in the Albany Movement at Albany, Georgia – which is also where the Freedom Singers were formed, at Albany State College – will discuss her experiences. Bulloch County area gospel artists will also perform.
Museum tours, including guided as well as self-guided tours, will be available Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday. For a description of exhibits – which include those inside the extant Willow Hill School building, plus, outside on the campus, the reassembled, one-room Bennett Grove Schoolhouse – see www.willowhillheritage.org/exhibits.
One year ago at this season, the Willow Hill Festival was replaced by a funeral service for Dr. Gayle Jackson, the center’s development director, who died Aug. 25, 2023 at age 72. Her portrait has now been placed at the center’s entrance as her husband and daughter, quoted above, and other volunteers resume the festival and carry on the center’s work.