Name/Title
Flagg Grove SchoolEntry/Object ID
2012.1.1Description
Flagg Grove School was built in 1889 on an acre of land that was purchased from Tina’s great uncle, Benjamin B. Flagg. He sold it to school trustees for $25.00, about a third of the land’s worth at the time, to build a school for African America children. Benjamin Flagg continued to be an active member of those trustees his entire life. It was a subscription school, which meant the children had to pay to attend. It cost the parents $1.00 a month per child to attend the school. This money was used to pay the teacher of the school. The school eventually became part of the public school system and remained open until the late 1960s.
Flagg Grove School is the school that Anna May Bullock, aka Tina Turner, went to from the 1st through 8th grades during the 1940s. After completing the 8th grade at Flagg Grove School, Tina attended Carver High school here in Brownsville for a couple of years. However, after her grandmother died, she moved to St. Louis to live with her mother, where she finished her education. This is where she met Ike Turner.
In 1967, Flagg Grove closed as one of the 23 African American schools in Haywood County that were closed upon the federally mandated school desegregation. The school and the land were sold at auction on October 21, 1967. After the auction, it was turned into a barn and a corncrib owned by Mr. Joe Stephens. The Stephens family still owns the land and in 2012, Joe and Pam Stephens donated the school to the City of Brownsville. The City had the school moved here to the Center from its original location in Nutbush. On September 26th 2014, it opened as the one and only Tina Turner Museum. The museum endorsed by Tina Turner, who helped pay for many of the restorations and brought in her personal designer, Stephen Sills, to design the museum.