Mattie Ridgley and her class at the Ridgeley Rosenwald School in the 1940s.
lot they had purchased, the community was able to demonstrate the financial support required for a Rosenwald grant. The school, one of the largest and best-equipped of the early schools, opened in 1922 with Calloway as principal. In the same year, Chapel Hill, Fletchertown, Duckettsville, Dupont Heights, Glenarden, Upper Marlboro, Muirkirk, and Oxon Hill also constructed schools. A school in Forestville was built in 1923. In 1924, Colored School 2 in Election District 6 (Camp Springs School), designed by architect Russell Mitchell, opened, and also a school in North Brentwood. Lakeland Elementary School (the John C. Johnson School) opened in 1926. Also in 1926, construction began on the T.B. School near Brandywine, designed by Raleigh, North Carolina, architects Linthicum and Linthicum, who also designed the Bowie School, Community High School in Lakeland, Ridgeley School, Westwood, Laurel, Capitol Heights and the Highland Park School, all completed in the period from 1926–1928. In Collington, Colored School 2 in Election District 7 opened in 1927 serving seven grades. The now much-altered Clinton School (Colored School 1, Election District 9) was typical of the larger, two-room schools and opened the same year. The Meadows School (Colored School 2 in Election District 9) was completed in 1929, and in 1930 Brandywine, Mitchellville, and Holly Grove built schools. The Ridgeley School is the most intact of the surviving Rosenwald Schools in Prince George’s County. Ridgeley followed the elementary school prototype of two large classrooms with a central passage, two cloakrooms and an industrial room. This school was the first purpose-built school for the community; previously, classes were held in a “benevolent hall” associated with the Ridgely Methodist Episcopal Church. Today the school has been restored to its appearance in the 1940s. In more densely settled areas, African-Americans used Rosenwald funds to construct secondary schools. In 1928, both the Community High School in Lakeland and the Highland Park School opened, both partially constructed with Rosenwald funds. The school in Lakeland drew students from the northwestern part of the county; the Highland Park School served the north-central section. (South county was already served by Marlboro High School, which opened in 1921.) Two schools survive from the post-Rosenwald period. The Woodville School, constructed in 1934, is a rare and outstanding example of a rural school house. Situated in Aquasco, the Woodville School was the largest elementary school in the county constructed for AfricanAmericans during this period. Although the Rosenwald school program had ended two years earlier, the new Woodville School took advantage of outside assistance from the federal government. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration provided the labor to construct the school, using materials provided by the county Board of Education. The much smaller Poplar Hill School was built in 1936 in the rural community of Baden to replace the 1878 school building. The small size and idiosyncratic form of the school may indicate that AfricanAmericans designed and built the school themselves.
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EDUCATION African-American Historic and Cultural Resources