In the 1950s, amid a broad Southern effort to expand African American education while preserving the dual school system, the Washington County School Board bought six acres from Roland and Ida Pompey to centralize the education of African American students in Vernon and the surrounding area and built Shady Grove Elementary School with $58,185 allocated for construction. Work began in 1952 and was completed for the 1953 school year, and the school served grades 1-8, after which students were bused to Roulhac High School in Chipley. Although the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education declared public school segregation unconstitutional, integration did not immediately take effect, and only on May 28, 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, did the Washington County School Board vote to end segregation in the county’s publicly funded schools and allow all pupils to attend any school regardless of race, color, or national origin. In the 1965-66 school year, the dual school system in Washington County ended and the segregated busing of African American high school students from Vernon to Chipley ceased. The school board deactivated Shady Grove Elementary in 1969, cut the building into sections, and moved parts of it for use as classrooms in the newly built Vernon Elementary School. In 1991, the school board transferred ownership of the property to the City of Vernon for perpetual use as a recreational space. Principals at the school were Thomas J. McDougald, James McNeil, and George Vann, and its teachers were Alma K. Jenkins, Delores G. Jenkins, Mildred McDougald, Martha Barge, Maudlynn C. Johnson, Elenor Powell, Bobbie Moultrie, Elaine Smith, Benjamin Williams, Kay Frances Houston, Margaret Dotson, Mamie Roulhac Jackson, Dorothy Mae Slayton, Joseph Williams, and Alma Vann.