Southside High School

Southside High School. Dinwiddie, Virginia. , Dinwiddie's Southside High School was started in 1908 as Dinwiddie Normal and Industrial School and was owned by the operated by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church. The only school in the area for African Americans for several decades, it served elementary through high school ages., With the efforts of highly-respected professor W.E. Woodyard, the county eventually began to pay tuition for all African American students and later for the salaries of the teachers as well, while the school was still owned and operated by the AME Zion Church. In 1939 the school was renamed the Dinwiddie Training School but in 1953 it was destroyed by fire. The students graduating celebrated commencement at the Mount Level Baptist Church on Courthouse road., In September 1953 the school reopened in the renovated "old frame" building. This building would later be used to teach agriculture, industrial arts, and home economics after the new, larger brick building was finished on Dinwiddie's U.S. Route 1 in the spring of 1954. This became the high school for African American students from all over Dinwiddie County. By 1956 the school was renamed Southside High School in a dedication with Dr. Roy W. Watson, principal. By the fall of 1965 an addition that included four science classrooms was completed. Following the county's school integration in 1969, Southside High School became Dinwiddie County Junior High School, which served grades 8-9., With continued county growth, the Dinwiddie County Public Schools would undergo additional changes in 1988, and the brick school building would again be renamed, this time as Dinwiddie Middle School, serving grades 6-8. In 1997 the building was completely renovated. However, in June 2012 it finally closed and two years later became the Historic Southside High School Education Center.