Of all the civil rights that the world has struggled and fought for, for five thousand years, the right to learn is undoubtedly the most fundamental.

--W.E.B. DuBois

"A good education, the first necessity of a free people was denied to most blacks in Georgia for a century after the Civil War, and more blacks had obstacles placed in their path to education than had them removed. Georgia's white elite-dominated society had little or no use for educated blacs. Consequently, many blacks were robbed of the incentive for formal schooling. Education meant 'overqualification' for available jobs, not advancement."

--Donald Grant, The Way It Was in the South, p.22

“The West Broad St. School has 113 scholars enrolled. Salary of newly elected teachers fixed at a rate of $40 per month.”
Board of Education Minute Book No. 2, 11-9-1874

“In consideration of the sum of one cent to him (George Wymberley Jones DeRenne) in hand paid by said parties of the second part (John Stoddard and William Hunter) . . . doth grant two lots of land, all buildings and improvements, situated at the corner of West Broad Street and Pine Street. . .”
Board of Education Minute Book No. 2, 4-30-1878

“The West Broad Street School shall be used for the education of colored children of African descent exclusively , in the elements of English . . . Arithmetic and Geography; that no act of religious worship shall ever be performed, nor any religious instruction . . . ever be give on the premises.”
Board of Education Minute Book No. 2, 5-13-1878

“The president, John Stoddard, also announce that the West Broad Street School building was insured for $4000 in a company of which Captain Wheaton
is agent.”
Board of Education Minute Book No. 2, 3-10-1879

• Built in 1867 by the Freedmen’s Bureau and primarily funded by the American Missionary Association, named in honor of New Yorker Alfred S. Beach, Editor of Scientific American, who donated funds to purchase the site.
• Initially 600 students enrolled. The school had 9 female teachers and a male principal. Most of these teachers were white. Tuition was $1 per month in 1873.
• In 1874, The Beach Institute was turned over to the Savannah Board of Education and became a free public school for black children.
• In 1878, the school was damaged by fire, rendering it temporarily unusable. The American Missionary Association took this opportunity to resume control of the building and the educational program as they were intent on securing a higher grade of instruction than the Board of Education in Savannah thought it prudent to furnish.
• In 1917 the Savannah Boys Club rented one small room in the basement of The Beach Institute as its weekly meeting place. The activities and fame of this club extended and expanded until it occupied the entire basement of the building and utilized every week day evening with its educational endeavors on behalf of under-privileged negro boys.
• The Beach Institute closed in 1919. Enrollment had significantly declined due to the opening of Savannah’s first black public high school on Cuyler Street, as well as the prevailing popularity of the Georgia State Industrial College at Thunderbolt, which opened in 1891.

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