life
CAROLINA CURIOSITIES
Schools That Changed Our Region by Ray Linville
How did a wealthy businessman from Chicago become so involved in educating school children in the South, especially in our area, almost a century ago? Increasingly lost in our collective memory is how Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, teamed up with Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee Institute and an African-American leader and philanthropist, to create school after school throughout our region in the early twentieth century. Washington was known for saying, “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” Rosenwald did exactly that. In the segregated school systems of the Jim Crow era, the education of African-American students was woefully inadequate and underfunded. To offset this deficiency, Rosenwald established a fund that provided “seed money” to build almost 5,000 schools for African-Americans in 15 states— those that had joined the Confederacy and several bordering states. More buildings were constructed in North Carolina than any other state—813 were erected here. Moore County’s surviving Rosenwald-funded school is in Pinebluff. Known as the Lincoln Park School, the onestory, four-teacher building that served Addor and nearby African-American communities. 16
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Built in 1922, it still stands at 1272 S. Currant St. Placed on the National Register in 1997, it hasn’t been used as a school for 70 years. In Moore County, a total of 15 Rosenwald schools (serving 50 teachers) were built during 1920-1929. In the OutreachNC readership area, Harnett County had the most Rosenwald schools with 23 (built during 19221930 for 73 teachers). Still surviving is a complex of six buildings known as Harnett County Training School that began as a two-story, 14-teacher structure built in 1922. When it opened in Dunn at 610 E. Johnston St., it served first through 11th graders and was the only brick multistory school for African-Americans in the county. It became one of the largest Rosenwald schools in the state when it was expanded in 1927. Placed on the National Register in 2014, it is one of only three multi-story Rosenwald schools in the state still standing. Next is Richmond County, where 65 teachers taught in 21 Rosenwald schools, ranging from one- to 10-teacher structures, built during 1918-1930. As many as 17 are no longer identifiable or known to the Richmond County Historical Association; knowledge of them has vanished along with the structures. Still physically surviving is Liberty Hill School at 234 Covington Community Road northwest of Ellerbe that was placed on the National Register in 2008. The building has two classrooms as well as an industrial room where girls learned home economics and boys were trained to use farming tools. The one-story, two-teacher building, built in 1930 when construction of Rosenwald schools was ending in our area, was no longer used as a school by the mid-1950s. In addition to building schools, Rosenwald wanted to promote collaboration among white and black citizens. He required local communities to raise matching funds