05/28/2026
HAPPY JUNETEENTH EMANCIPATION WEEKEND!
Principal Joseph Nathaniel Crooms is shown here with Hooper Academy 10th graders in 1920. Hopper first opened in 1906 and the building still exists today at the corner of 11th Street and Pine Avenue in Sanford. A few blocks north was the original Georgetown School at the northeast corner of 7th Street and Cypress Avenue, built in 1885 with $100 from the School Board.
Mr. Crooms' parents, Moses and Dafney Crooms, were once slaves at a Tallahassee plantation. They came to Sanford in the 1880s from Monticello, when he was just a small child. Nathaniel was principal at Hopper Academy from 1906 to 1926.
In 1926 Joseph and his wife, Wealthy Mabel Crooms, donated the 7.5 acres for the Crooms Academy, then a 40x60 foot school on west 13th Street in Goldsboro. He became principal of his namesake school with Wealthy as assistant principal.
