A High School? A High School!
It was like any other Wednesday night meeting at a Baptist church in the mountains of South Carolina, with a small, dedicated crowd gathered to talk about all the usual subjects: missions and budgets and prayer requests. Tat is, until John Ballenger raised his hand.
“A high school,” he suggested.
Ballenger pleaded with the other members of the North Greenville Baptist Association (NGBA) to consider building a high school from the ground up, which could service families in northern Greenville County towns, like Travelers Rest and Marietta.
A high school? It was quite the novel idea in 1891, at a time when there were only a handful of high schools in the entire county, perhaps no more than three.
Te room, no doubt, quieted in thought. Ten one by one, or maybe all at once, the others piped in with their agreement.
“I think we should do it, too.” “Sure. Why not?” “Tis might work.”
A high school. Yes, they needed one. And like that, the wheels began to turn.
The “Dark Corner” Then
At this point in history, the northern Greenville area was in the heyday of the lifestyle that earned it the notorious nickname the “Dark Corner,” suitable not only for the perceived backwardness of its residents, but also for their law-breaking tendencies.
In fact, the primarily Scottish and Irish immi-
1892 Te North Greenville
Baptist Association founded a high school on 10 acres of land in Tigerville, SC.
grants who populated Glassy Mountain and the surrounding towns were mostly uneducated and poor. Children learned to keep the farm like Daddy did. What little money they had came from selling crops. But you could sell corn whis- key for more money than corn by the bushel!
Te residents’ motives for moonshine went be- yond rebellion for its own sake; they constructed stills and made liquor at night for the money, and anyone who threatened that source of steady income became an enemy.
“Essentially, the failure of the United States to 1893
Classes began at North Greenville High School (NGHS) on Jan.16, 1893.
1902
NGHS had its first graduating class in 1902.
First Graduating Class, 1902
acknowledge the cultural and economic factors behind home distillation was the root cause of the most violent resistance. After outlawing the practice, the federal government failed to present the whiskey-producing population with a viable economic alternative,” wrote history professor Joshua Beau Blackwell.
So it was that the Dark Corner came to earn quite a reputation for the “illegal whiskey-mak- ing, mountain feuds, a few killings, and lawless acts” that were all too common here.
Te area saw little prospect of change.
1915 In 1915, NGHS became North Greenville Baptist Academy (NGBA).
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