From the time of the first public schools in Delaware in the early 1800s until the mid-1960s, African-American and white students attended separate schools. Black children who went to school attended one-room schoolhouses in rural areas.

Some of those students gathered Saturday, Oct. 31, for a reunion at Rabbit’s Ferry School on Robinsonville Road. It was also a time to pay tribute to one of the school’s teachers, Hilda Norwood, who taught in the one-room schoolhouse from 1947 to 1964.

Aunt Tinny, as former students affectionately call her, also attended the school in the late 1930s.

It’s part of local history that is nearly forgotten.

Built with funds provided by Pierre S. du Pont from 1918 to 1928 to teach black students in more than 80 small schools across the state, many of the old schools have been torn down or are in disrepair. Yet Rabbit’s Ferry has remained an important part of the community.

Serving as a community center, it is used by groups, including Israel United Methodist Church.

Rabbit’s Ferry, built in 1920 to replace an older school on the site, served as a school for 20 to 25 students in grades one through eight, and later for grades one through six, for 45 years.

It was closed in 1965 and students were moved to the Lewes School on Savannah Road, Norwood said. That was 11 years after the Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court case that ended school segregation – the practice of separate but equal education. Delaware was one of the defendants in the case.

In the early days of the school, there was no electricity, and a pot-bellied stove provided heat with a coal bin next to the classroom, Norwood said.

Although supplies were in short supply most of the time, Norwood said, students got a well-rounded education and a strong foundation for life at Rabbit’s Ferry. “The students who transferred didn’t seem to have any problems,” she said.

Even so, she had mixed emotions leaving the school that had been so much a part of her life for 25 years.

Education was far different than it is today. After completing the eighth grade at Rabbit’s Ferry, Norwood went to school for one year in Lewes and then went to boarding school for seven years at Delaware State College - now university - where she completed high school and got her teaching degree. She went on to teach elementary education in the Cape Henlopen School District for nearly another 30 years.

She said children she talks with today couldn’t believe that Rabbit’s Ferry was once an active school.

It wasn’t until the opening of William C. Jason High School in 1950 that black students had an opportunity to attend high school in their own county.

Patsy Hall, a student in the early 1960s, said the years spent at Rabbit’s Ferry were a wonderful time in her life. Teachers in the small schools, who taught many of the same students for six to eight years, became more like family.

“Aunt Tinny didn’t just teach us the three Rs; she told us ladies to hold our heads up and be proud of who we were. She gave us so much more,” she said.

Fern Bliss-Morgan said Aunt Tinny was strict, but it’s what students needed. She said she was sent to sit in the coal bin once for talking in class.

“It still didn’t stop me from talking,” she laughed. “And it’s carried on to my daughters and grandchildren. It all started at Rabbit’s Ferry.”

“She made her mark on Sussex County and this history has to be preserved,” said Stell Parker Selby, a member of the Cape Henlopen School District Board of Education. She said a one-room schoolhouse in Milton fell down due to neglect.

Another former student, Robert Harmon, said the reunion was so important to him that he wanted to attend even though he was due to travel out of the country at 4 p.m. from Norfolk, Va., to return to a military base in Germany. He wanted to pay his respects to his teacher.

The name of the school is reported to have come from an incident that occurred as the school was being built. During a break, as workers from the community sat around eating a picnic lunch, a rabbit ran across the grass.

The workers said it was as if the rabbit was ferrying across the lawn. The name stuck.

Other one-room schools were located in Belltown, Cool Spring and Milton.

Many Nanticoke Indian children in the area attended a one-room school near Long Neck, which is now a museum.

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The history of state’s ‘separate but equal’ education

1798 — Quakers open a school for blacks in Wilmington. Others follow over the next 20 years.

1829 – Public education is formally established in the state, with no mention of minorities.

1837 – Only one black school is in operation in the state, operated by the African School Society.

1866 – Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement and Education of Colored People is founded; it helps to build 32 schools for black students over the next decade.

1870s – Delaware has public education for blacks and whites, but many downstate black schools are nothing more than run-down shacks.

1875 – First public money is allocated for black schools in the state. In an effort to create more black schools, the state legislature passes a law allowing African Americans to tax their own property for school construction. Delaware is the only state in the country with a segregated system for collecting school taxes.

1881 – Separate tax system is abolished and general funding for all schools is provided; $2,400 is allocated for black schools.

1892 – State College for Colored Students, now Delaware State University, opens.

1897 – State constitution provides for dual school system divided by race; a constitutional provision that would stand for nearly 100 years.

1910 – By this year, 80 black-only schools exist; most are handmade structures.

1911 – State is spending almost twice as much for white schools than it is for black schools.

1913 – Legislation is passed for school reform for centralized schools; opposition from lawmakers in downstate Delaware leads to repeal of the law two years later.

1916 – State College adds a four-year, high school division.

1917 – Funded by Pierre S. du Pont, the Rockefeller Foundation undertakes a study of state schools. Survey finds that resources are lacking for black schools and most schools need to be rebuilt.

1918 to 1928 – 86 schools for Negro students are built thanks to a $2.5 million donation from Pierre S. du Pont. Another $4 million from du Pont is spent on upgrading the entire state school system over the next 20 years. 

1920 – Existing Rabbit’s Ferry School opens.

1921 – General Assembly passes law requiring Delaware Board of Education to maintain separate schools for those of color, which are supposed to be uniform and equally effective as those for whites.

1943 – Study on education in Delaware reveals: low pay for black teachers; high drop-out rates among black students; facilities not equal; and progress hindered by public attitudes which reject equality and favor continuing segregation.

1948 – University of Delaware opens doors to black students.

1950 ­– William C. Jason Comprehensive High School, the first black high school in Sussex County, opens its doors near Georgetown.

1950 – Delaware Chancellor Collins J. Seitz orders desegregation of Delaware schools, but the case is appealed, along with four other defendants, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

1951 – Delaware State College (the name is changed in 1941) disbands its high school program.

1953 – Jason High School expands to admit seventh and eighth grade students.

1954 – In the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court orders desegregation of all schools. Court declares separate but equal education is unconstitutional.

1957 – While many upstate schools comply with the ruling, a suit is filed ordering seven downstate schools to admit black students. The ruling is appealed.

1959 – Court-ordered integration in Delaware is finally implemented.

1965 – State Board of Education adopts resolution to close small schools over the next five years. Many are closed the next year.

1965 – Starting in 1965 and over the next three years, black students, like those from Rabbit’s Ferry, attend integrated classrooms for the first time.

1968 – General Assembly passes Education Advancement Act to create 26 school districts; Wilmington is excluded.

1976 – After years of legal action, U.S. District Court orders New Castle County school districts to begin inter-district busing to remedy racial separateness. Court cases over desegregation continue in New Castle County until 1996.

1995 – General Assembly amends state constitution to remove separate education system written into constitution in 1897.

Sources: Hagley Museum and Library, University of Delaware.