Richard Allen School recognized on national register

Peggy Trott said she played softball at Richard Allen School on a diamond now covered with grass. “There’s still a scar on my knee from sliding, and my finger is out of place from trying to catch a ball without a glove,” she laughed.

Trott joined former students and members of a coalition dedicated to preserving the former African American school in Georgetown during an Aug. 8 event celebrating its placement on the National Register of Historic Places. “I left here and went to college,” she said. “All my kids went here and graduated college, too.” 

Solomon Henry showed off a New Farmers of America jacket he wore as a student in the 1940s. Henry said doctors, lawyers, military officers and nurses all graduated from the school. However, he did not. “I finished 11th grade, but there were no educational facilities to complete 12th grade,” said Henry, who moved to Philadelphia to live with an aunt while he completed 12th grade at Benjamin Franklin High School in 1950.

Henry said he was honored to stand where he started school in a two-room building in 1939. “We are fortunate Mr. du Pont had the foresight to know that people of color could do more than work in the kitchen or field,” Henry said.

Sen. Ruth Briggs King, R- Georgetown, and Sen. Brian Pettyjohn, R-Georgetown, co-sponsored bills to establish a state marker at the site and to deed ownership of the school to the Richard Allen Coalition in 2015. “This is a site for history to live and breathe,” Briggs King said.

Pettyjohn, who said he attended kindergarten and first grade at the school, said preserving it is the right thing to do. “We can learn from the history of former generations,” Pettyjohn said. “This site will be a museum and community center that will bring people together.”

Built in 1923 by Pierre du Pont, the Richard Allen School was used for decades by the Indian River School District until it was closed in June 2010 and turned over to the state. 

The Richard Allen Coalition formed in 2010 with the goal to reopen the school as a community center and museum. 

The school was named after Richard Allen, a person born enslaved in Philadelphia in 1760 who worked for years to buy his freedom. In 1794, Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the nation’s first independent black denominational church. 

Go to richardallenschoolgeorgetown.com.