When Lucy A. Dawson died in 1917, her daughter Mattie Dawson was teaching at Selden Institute in Brunswick, Georgia.

Established in 1903, Selden merged in 1933 with Gillespie Institute, the Cordele, Georgia, school run by another Wilson native, Augustus S. Clark.

The site of the school’s campus is now a public park, and only the headmaster’s house remains of the original buildings.

Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, June 2024.