Bridgeforth High School

Bridgeforth began around 1900 in a church basement, where J. T. Bridgeforth opened the first county-run public school for Black children in Pulaski. It later moved to a county-bought building renamed Broadview. After a twelfth grade was added, Bridgeforth pressed for a proper building. Federal WPA money paid for it, and on March 19, 1937 it opened with three teachers and 68 students. By 1950 it taught French, business and builders' trades, and the Class of 1949 gave the four stone piers. A Baptist association has owned the building since 1989.

What the plaque says

Bridgeforth High School Though black public education existed in Giles County by 1869, Bridgeforth was the first black high school. Designed by America's first black architectural firm, McKissack and McKissack, which had local roots, and named for black educator J. T. Bridgeforth, the school operated from 1937 until 1958, when a larger facility was built nearby. In 1965, Giles County became the first county in Tennessee to voluntarily integrate its schools.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pulaski Public Square and the Giles County Courthouse — 0.7 mi
  The 1909 courthouse and nineteenth-century storefronts on Pulaski's square, in the town where the Ku Klux Klan was founded and where the architect Moses McKissack III was born.
• James D. Vaughan Southern Gospel Music Museum — 18 mi
  A museum on the third floor of the Vaughan Municipal Building on the Lawrenceburg square, honoring the shape-note publisher who built a songbook, quartet and radio empire here from 1903.
• David Crockett State Park — 19 mi
  A Lawrenceburg park on Shoal Creek where Davy Crockett ran a gristmill, a powder mill and a distillery from 1817, and later broke with Andrew Jackson over Indian removal.
• Meriwether Lewis Site — 32 mi
  The place on the Natchez Trace Parkway where Meriwether Lewis died in October 1809, with his 1848 monument, a pioneer cemetery, a walk on the Old Trace and a free campground.

More markers nearby

• Gabriel McKissack — 0.2 mi
• Fort Lilly — 0.4 mi
• Donald Grady Davidson and John Crowe Ransom — 0.8 mi
• Walter Herschel Beech — 0.9 mi