The Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center will host its 2026 Willow Hill Heritage Festival this weekend at the historic Willow Hill School in Portal.
The 2026 Heritage Festival takes place as Willow Hill commemorates 152 years since the founding of Willow Hill School in 1874 and as the nation commemorates the 250th anniversary of the United States.
"Our history is American history," Dr. Alvin D. Jackson, president of the Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center said. "The people who came out of slavery and established Willow Hill understood the importance of education, family, faith and community. One hundred and fifty-two years later, we are still carrying forward the work they began."
The Willow Hill Heritage and Renaissance Center invites former students, descendants of Willow Hill families, churches, genealogists, historians, researchers and members of the public to attend the festival and discover the history that connects families across generations.
According to a release from the Willow Hill Center, the 2026 festival on Saturday and Sunday will be a scaled-back, history-focused celebration emphasizing museum exhibits, African American genealogy, family history, historic preservation and the heritage of the Willow Hill community and surrounding areas.
“The festival comes at an exciting time for Willow Hill,” the release stated.
In 2025, the Institute of Museum and Library Services awarded Willow Hill a $100,000 Museum Grant for African American History and Culture to preserve one of the Center's most important collections – hundreds of historic oral-history recordings documenting African American life in Bulloch County and surrounding communities in southeast Georgia.
The grant will support the preservation of 60 reel-to-reel tapes and 500 cassette tapes, representing approximately 810 hours of recorded oral histories. The project includes inventorying and digitizing the recordings, creating transcripts and descriptive metadata and developing a comprehensive archival finding aid.
Making the recordings more accessible will provide a new resource for genealogists, descendants, historians, educators, students and researchers seeking to understand the families and communities that shaped this region.
"This grant will allow us to preserve voices that might otherwise be lost," said Dr. Jackson said. "Many of these recordings contain the memories of people who are no longer with us. They tell us about their families, their communities and the events they experienced. When we preserve these voices, we are preserving history that often cannot be found in traditional written records."
Saturday: Museum exhibits, genealogy and historic tours, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
On Saturday, visitors are invited to explore the museum's exhibits, conduct family-history and genealogy research, and participate in tours of the historic Willow Hill campus.
The center encourages visitors to bring family names, photographs, funeral programs, obituaries, Bibles, family records and other information that may help them trace their ancestry. Visitors can explore Willow Hill's historical and genealogical resources and learn how local records can help reconnect families with their past.
The Center's growing collections demonstrate how seemingly ordinary family documents can become invaluable historical resources. Funeral programs, photographs, oral histories, school records and family papers often contain information unavailable in traditional public records.
Tours will introduce visitors to the history of Willow Hill School, which was founded in 1874 by formerly enslaved African Americans who recognized education as essential to the future of their children. The school remained in operation for 125 years before closing in 1999.
Visitors will also have an opportunity to learn about the historic Bennett Grove School, the last surviving one-room African American schoolhouse in Bulloch County, which was relocated to the Willow Hill campus in 2017.
Sunday: Gospel Fest, 3-5 p.m.
On Sunday, the Heritage Festival will conclude with a Gospel Fest, bringing together churches, families, singers, musicians and community members for an afternoon of gospel music, faith, fellowship and remembrance.
The Gospel Fest reflects the central role of the African American church in the history of Willow Hill and communities throughout southeast Georgia. For generations, churches served not only as places of worship but also as centers for education, community organization, mutual assistance and social change.