Organizers seek to preserve heritage of historic Gibson Co. school

GIBSON COUNTY, Tenn. — Organizers in Bradford are working to preserve a piece of West Tennessee history.

The Mt. Zion School has sat on the same one-acre lot in Gibson County for more than 150 years. Now, residents are working to add it to Tennessee’s registry of historic places.

In 1855, the facility was built as a school. Residents who studied in that same classroom told us why the building means so much.

“The oldest school in Gibson County that educated black people,” Hollis Skinner, a former student, said. “We want to keep that history. We’ve got to expose it so people know about it and can help us out.”

Surrounded by history, the building sits across from the Mt. Zion Church and a community cemetery with some of the tombstones dating back to the early 1870s.