“M” is for Mill schools

“M” is for Mill schools. Textile mill entrepreneurs remade the South Carolina landscape in the late nineteenth century. They surrounded their mills with villages and provided schools to educate the children of mill workers and to demonstrate to the public their concern for the community’s well-being.  The mill school was a reflection of the individual community and was run with little interference from the state until the early twentieth century. Prior to South Carolina’s compulsory attendance law, children as young as nine went to work in the cotton mills. The 6-0-1 law in 1924 helped solidify the role of the state in financing public education. The 1950s saw the mill village passing from existence and South Carolina’s mill schools, by then absorbed into modern rationalized school districts across the state, also faded from existence.