Its name reflects four schools founded and merged in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida by the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate former slaves and their descendants.

Congressman James E. Clyburn (D-SC), major league baseball pioneer Larry Doby, businessman E. Perry Palmer, childcare advocate Frieda Mitchell, "Dean of the CIAA" coach Eddie C. McGirt, and civil rights attorney John Roy Harper II.

Founded in 1887 in Camden, this was the brainchild of Sarah Babcock, a Plymouth, Massachusetts teacher who'd opened a short-lived Freedmen's Bureau school in 1867 before purchasing the 27-acre Thomas Lang plantation.

[2] Mather Academy expanded its curriculum over the years, offering grade levels from kindergarten through high school, and accepting applicants from across the nation.

The combination of black students co-existing peaceably and equally with white teachers and administrators during segregation made Mather an "oasis" of race relations.

[2] In 1959, the Women's Division of Christian Service of the Methodist Board of Missions closed the Boylan-Haven School in Florida and merged it with Mather Academy in Camden to economize finances.