For the kids who grew up in Newark's Black community, the New London Avenue School was more than just classrooms, desks and books.
“It was home,” said Crystal Hayman Simms, who attended the school for three years in the mid 1950s. “It was part of the community.”
The New London Avenue School is now the George Wilson Center, and the School Hill community surrounding it is all but unrecognizable to those who used to live there, taken over by the University of Delaware and student housing.
However, a new museum in the basement of the George Wilson Center aims to keep alive the history of the beloved School Hill community.
“We're able to show that this community was viable, it was vibrant, and it had lots of people that really were leaders and were very concerned about the welfare of the area,” said Freeman Williams, president of the Friends of School Hill Association.
The museum celebrated its grand opening Saturday morning, and many former School Hill residents returned for the occasion.
“It brings back a lot of memories,” said Tyrone Wood, who grew up on Grays Avenue and attended the New London Avenue School in the 1950s.
A strong legacy of education
The New London Avenue School opened in 1922, one of more than 80 African-American schools funded by P.S. DuPont. It taught students in grades one through eight, but students had to travel to Howard High School in Wilmington to complete their education.
The school also served as a central gathering place for the School Hill community, Newark’s black community that spanned the area of New London Road and Cleveland Avenue. The tight-knit neighborhood was home to a number of churches and businesses, including a barbershop, a gas station, a pool hall, a convenience store, hair salons, an ice cream parlor and more.
The New London Avenue School closed in 1958, after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered schools to desegregate. Students were transferred to Medill Elementary, Central Elementary, Central Junior High and Newark High.
The city eventually purchased the building and now uses it as a community center named for George Wilson, who built houses in the School Hill community and served as Newark’s first Black councilman.
Simms fondly remembered the community feel of the The New London Avenue School.
“You were coming to school with your cousins, your neighbors and your friends,” she said.
The school closed after her third-grade year, and she was bused to Medill Elementary, now part of Shue-Medill Middle School on Capitol Trail. At the time, she was too young to understand the impact of the Brown vs. Board of Education court decision that mandated the integration of schools.
“All we heard was, 'You're going to the white school next year. You have to make sure you do this, make sure you do that,'” she recalled. “Going in, we weren't afraid. It was just, we were going into the unknown.”
Students at Medill were accepting of their new Black classmates, but that acceptance had limits, Simms said. On at least two or three occasions, white classmates invited her to their home for a playdate, only to have their parents cancel it when they found out Simms was Black.
Academically, the students fit right in.
“I absolutely did not miss a beat when I went to Medill. They had prepared us so well,” Simms said, noting that the New London Avenue students quickly dispelled any notion that they didn't stack up to the white students. “If integration didn't teach me anything else, it was that we are just as good as them.”
Lindsey Saunders, who grew up on Corbit Street, said he wasn't a big fan of school but eventually found a friend group at the New London Avenue School.
“In the beginning, I didn't want to come,” he said. “But once I got here and started meeting the other kids, I had a good time. And the teachers were very nice.”
Keeping the history alive
The new museum is more than two decades in the making, said Williams, who noted that the first School Hill reunion was held in 2002.
“It really lit a fire under some of us that we needed to find a way to bring members of the community together, both people that grew up in the area that we call School Hill, but also people in the community who were not familiar,” Williams said.
Community members formed the nonprofit Friends of School Hill Association, organized the installation of a historic marker commemorating School Hill and hosted several community events over the years, including a large celebration of the school's 100th anniversary in 2022. That same year, they set up a temporary exhibit showcasing the dozens of military veterans from the community.
All the while, plans for a permanent museum were taking shape. The city allowed the group to use space in the George Wilson Center basement – a room that served as the New London Avenue School's kitchen – and allocated $25,000 to convert the room into a museum.
“The people in this neighborhood were a tight-knit, cohesive group, and to have that legacy live on in Newark is just the right thing to do,” Mayor Jerry Clifton said. “Whether it's good history or bad history, we learn from history.”
Simms said she has dreamed of a museum focused on School Hill since she helped put together an exhibit on the community at the Newark History Museum more than a decade ago. The community has way more history than could fit in one display case, she said.
“I looked around and said, we need our own museum,” she said. “Since 2012, it's been in my heart to have our own building somewhere.”
The current exhibit highlights the DuPont schools and all the other schools that School Hill community members attended. Future exhibits will focus on athletes from the community, a timeline of African Americans in Newark and the many businesses where School Hill residents worked.
“I love just doing the research,” Simms said.
Williams said working on the museum and other initiatives helped change the perspective of many former School Hill residents who were disillusioned by what has become of their old neighborhood.
“We stopped talking about the current status of the neighborhood – it doesn't look the same, it's not made up of the cross-section of people that it once was – and started focusing on how do we tell the story? How can we make sure that we celebrate the experiences we had in the past and how can we also make sure that people who are not familiar with the community get a chance to know that?” he said.
The museum will be open from 1 to 4 p.m. every Saturday from April through December. Admission is free, and attendees should use the lower entrance to the George Wilson Center.
“It's just a continuation of sharing what School Hill was all about and how it played an important role in Newark,” Williams said.
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