Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald (seated third from the left, next to Booker T. Washington) served on the Board of Trustees of Tuskegee Institute. (Photo Courtesy of Alabama Department of Archives and History)
This year marks a year-long centennial celebration of the Rosenwald rural school building program. This program has been described as “one of the most ambitious school building programs ever witnessed in the United States.” And it all began in Alabama as a collaboration between a nationally renowned educator and a prominent businessman.
This photograph shows Macon County's Shiloh Rosenwald School in 2010, after it underwent extensive restoration. (Photo Courtesy of Dorothy Walker) The concept of building small rural schools for blacks originated with Booker T. Washington and the staff at Tuskegee Institute’s Extension Department at the start of the twentieth century. Julius Rosenwald, CEO of Sears and Roebuck, invested in this rural “school construction campaign” substantially, thereby helping to construct more than five thousand buildings in 883 counties in fifteen southern states between 1912 and 1932 and filling a desperate need. Alabama’s 1875 constitution imposed school segregation, and the 1901 constitution subsequently allowed local school boards to distribute state school funds, much of which were diverted to white schools. Therefore, blacks often held classes in rented homes, churches, lodge halls, or in abandoned shacks and houses. In 1910, two years before the Rosenwald School building program began, 61 percent of the black schools in Alabama were housed in such structures. In the same year, only about 60 percent of black children between ages six and fourteen in sixteen southern states attended school. Up until 1910, the school term for blacks in Alabama was less than five months.
Beginning in 1904, Washington and Tuskegee extension director Clinton J. Calloway used philanthropic funding to develop a public school building program for blacks in Macon County. Over the next five years, Washington and Calloway used funding from Standard Oil baron Henry Huttleson Rogers to construct forty-six schools for blacks in Macon County. When Rogers died in 1909, Washington began looking for another major benefactor who would invest in and help expand the rural school construction program. In 1911, while speaking in Chicago, Washington met Julius Rosenwald. He was one of the most famous and influential businessmen of his time and had recently expanded his philanthropy to African American causes.
Washington added Rosenwald to Tuskegee’s Board of Trustees and began to cultivate him as a successor to Rogers in the school building project. But he discreetly allowed the idea to unfold as Rosenwald’s own plan. The two men began exchanging views about a new rural school construction program that would combine outside philanthropy with community self-help to leverage public investment in black education.
Under the direction of the Extension Department of Tuskegee Institute, Washington and Calloway constructed six experimental schools in and around Macon County. These were built to designs by Robert R. Taylor, staff architect and director of industries at Tuskegee, and were completed the spring of 1914. The success of these first experimental schools convinced Rosenwald to support an expanded program that would be overseen by Tuskegee.
The term “Rosenwald School” became an identifying label in which “Rosenwald” served as an adjective to distinguish it from other “colored” schools. No doubt some people mistakenly thought that the Rosenwald designation meant that Julius Rosenwald had paid for the building in its entirety.
Although Rosenwald’s contribution was substantial, the fund generally contributed an average of about one-sixth of the total monetary cost of the building, grounds, and equipment. Most of the cash, raised either through private contributions or public tax funds, came from rural black citizens themselves. Their additional contributions in the form of land, labor, and building materials were also substantial. Generally, too, they provided ongoing maintenance.
This type of school building construction was unprecedented in the development of education in the South. Rosenwald schools meant better schoolhouses, trained teachers, improved health conditions, and in some cases, bus transportation. The schools were frequently the most attractive public building in the district and became a social center for blacks.
Tuskegee developed a set of standardized plans in a pamphlet entitled The Negro Rural School and its Relation to the Community, from which communities could choose an appropriate design. One common feature, and a character- defining element in identifying Rosenwald schools today, was high, spacious windows grouped to maximize natural lighting and air circulation. The plans also addressed sanitation and moisture control.
All schools were expected to designate a room that was utilized for industrial training. But Rosenwald schools were identified not by the number of classrooms but by the number of teachers. Thus a “one teacher school” meant that a building would have two rooms, “two teacher schools” meant a building had three rooms, and so on. The most common school constructed in Alabama was Floorplan #20—a two-teacher type school. It is also the most common of the remaining schools so far documented.
Booker T. Washington died in 1915, but the school building program continued to be administered by Tuskegee until 1920. At that time Rosenwald decided to establish a central administration at Nashville, Tennessee, under the direction of S. L. Smith. Smith updated Tuskegee’s designs and provided additional plans in a second publication entitled Community School Plans.
To measure the impact of the Rosenwald fund on the education of black southerners, one need only look at the statistics. In 1932 a quarter of all black school children in the South were taught in Rosenwald Schools. And when the building program ended in the same year, one in five African American school buildings in the South was a Rosenwald school.
Although Alabama saw the construction of the first eighty Rosenwald schools, the state ultimately ranked sixth overall in the number of buildings constructed with assistance from the Rosenwald fund. Between 1913 and 1932, 407 schools, shops, and teacher homes were built in the state. Of these, less than ten percent have been documented as still standing.
As rural schools began to close in the 1950s and 1960s, especially after integration, many communities held onto their Rosenwald schools as markers of communal spirit. Today the surviving Rosenwald schools, teachers’ homes, and vocational training buildings symbolize both the vision of Washington and Rosenwald and, more generally, the historic struggle of blacks for educational opportunities in a segregated South.
Beginning in 1904, Washington and Tuskegee extension director Clinton J. Calloway used philanthropic funding to develop a public school building program for blacks in Macon County. Over the next five years, Washington and Calloway used funding from Standard Oil baron Henry Huttleson Rogers to construct forty-six schools for blacks in Macon County. When Rogers died in 1909, Washington began looking for another major benefactor who would invest in and help expand the rural school construction program. In 1911, while speaking in Chicago, Washington met Julius Rosenwald. He was one of the most famous and influential businessmen of his time and had recently expanded his philanthropy to African American causes.
Washington added Rosenwald to Tuskegee’s Board of Trustees and began to cultivate him as a successor to Rogers in the school building project. But he discreetly allowed the idea to unfold as Rosenwald’s own plan. The two men began exchanging views about a new rural school construction program that would combine outside philanthropy with community self-help to leverage public investment in black education.
Under the direction of the Extension Department of Tuskegee Institute, Washington and Calloway constructed six experimental schools in and around Macon County. These were built to designs by Robert R. Taylor, staff architect and director of industries at Tuskegee, and were completed the spring of 1914. The success of these first experimental schools convinced Rosenwald to support an expanded program that would be overseen by Tuskegee.
The term “Rosenwald School” became an identifying label in which “Rosenwald” served as an adjective to distinguish it from other “colored” schools. No doubt some people mistakenly thought that the Rosenwald designation meant that Julius Rosenwald had paid for the building in its entirety.
Although Rosenwald’s contribution was substantial, the fund generally contributed an average of about one-sixth of the total monetary cost of the building, grounds, and equipment. Most of the cash, raised either through private contributions or public tax funds, came from rural black citizens themselves. Their additional contributions in the form of land, labor, and building materials were also substantial. Generally, too, they provided ongoing maintenance.
This type of school building construction was unprecedented in the development of education in the South. Rosenwald schools meant better schoolhouses, trained teachers, improved health conditions, and in some cases, bus transportation. The schools were frequently the most attractive public building in the district and became a social center for blacks.
Tuskegee developed a set of standardized plans in a pamphlet entitled The Negro Rural School and its Relation to the Community, from which communities could choose an appropriate design. One common feature, and a character- defining element in identifying Rosenwald schools today, was high, spacious windows grouped to maximize natural lighting and air circulation. The plans also addressed sanitation and moisture control.
All schools were expected to designate a room that was utilized for industrial training. But Rosenwald schools were identified not by the number of classrooms but by the number of teachers. Thus a “one teacher school” meant that a building would have two rooms, “two teacher schools” meant a building had three rooms, and so on. The most common school constructed in Alabama was Floorplan #20—a two-teacher type school. It is also the most common of the remaining schools so far documented.
Booker T. Washington died in 1915, but the school building program continued to be administered by Tuskegee until 1920. At that time Rosenwald decided to establish a central administration at Nashville, Tennessee, under the direction of S. L. Smith. Smith updated Tuskegee’s designs and provided additional plans in a second publication entitled Community School Plans.
To measure the impact of the Rosenwald fund on the education of black southerners, one need only look at the statistics. In 1932 a quarter of all black school children in the South were taught in Rosenwald Schools. And when the building program ended in the same year, one in five African American school buildings in the South was a Rosenwald school.
Although Alabama saw the construction of the first eighty Rosenwald schools, the state ultimately ranked sixth overall in the number of buildings constructed with assistance from the Rosenwald fund. Between 1913 and 1932, 407 schools, shops, and teacher homes were built in the state. Of these, less than ten percent have been documented as still standing.
As rural schools began to close in the 1950s and 1960s, especially after integration, many communities held onto their Rosenwald schools as markers of communal spirit. Today the surviving Rosenwald schools, teachers’ homes, and vocational training buildings symbolize both the vision of Washington and Rosenwald and, more generally, the historic struggle of blacks for educational opportunities in a segregated South.
As rural schools began to close in the 1950s and 1960s, especially after integration, many communities held onto their Rosenwald schools as markers of communal spirit. Today the surviving Rosenwald schools, teachers’ homes, and vocational training buildings symbolize both the vision of Washington and Rosenwald and, more generally, the historic struggle of blacks for educational opportunities in a segregated South.
In 2002 the National Trust for Historic Preservation named Rosenwald schools to their annual roster of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. Between 2007 and 2010, the Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation partnered with the Trust to provide matching grants ($40,000-50,000) to assist Rosenwald school restoration projects across the South. Nearly $2 million from Lowe’s has gone toward this eff ort to reclaim some surviving Rosenwald schools for viable community uses.
Four Alabama Rosenwald schools received grants from Lowe’s. Two of the schools restored with help from these funds are the Shiloh Rosenwald School in Notasulga, Macon County, and the Tunstall (Emory) Rosenwald School near Cedarville, in Hale County. Both communities now use the buildings as multipurpose meeting spaces.
Former students, teachers, and community leaders recently erected a historical marker for the Rosenwald School in Loachapoka in Lee County, widely believed to be the first Rosenwald School. Alumni of the school recalled their memories in a printed brochure distributed at the event. One former student, Charlie Ezell, recalled that he “helped make fires in the pot bellied stove.” Another student, Barbara Ervin, recalled, “My fourth grade teacher Miss Rebecca Jones had heard of a remedy to cure my asthma.” Student Judy Lockhart remembered that “all of our books were so worn that the pages would sometimes fall out as you turned the pages. But we respected each book for the next year’s class…. Walking to school sometimes our paper would get wet if it rained really hard.”
The Tuskegee University conference on June 14-16, 2012, will draw participants from across the nation. It will convene alumni, community leaders, historians, and preservationists to discuss the significance of the Rosenwald school movement and strategies for preserving both the remaining schools and their associated stories. This centennial event will strengthen the national Rosenwald network by linking alumni and preservationists throughout the rural South. The conference will include sessions about grant writing; exhibit and museum development; promotion and marketing; records conservation; partnership building; and creative reuse for Rosenwald schools. Individuals wanting more information about the history of Rosenwald schools can go online to www.rosenwaldschools.com. To get information on a specific school, individuals may visit the Rosenwald School database at Fisk University: rosenwald.fisk.edu. The database contains information from the Fisk University library where the Rosenwald School Building Fund collection is archived. Individuals wanting information on documented Rosenwald schools in Alabama, or wishing to provide information on a school in their community, can contact Dorothy Walker at dorothy.walker@preserveala.org or at (334) 230-2665.
This feature was previously published in Issue 104, Spring 2012.
About the Author
Dorothy Walker coordinates the documentation of Rosenwald Schools for the Alabama Historical Commission and serves as Alabama’s representative on the National Trust for Historic Preservation Rosenwald School Initiative and Task Force. Robert Gamble, standing editor of the “Southern Architecture and Preservation” department of Alabama Heritage, is senior architectural historian for the Alabama Historical Commission.
Four Alabama Rosenwald schools received grants from Lowe’s. Two of the schools restored with help from these funds are the Shiloh Rosenwald School in Notasulga, Macon County, and the Tunstall (Emory) Rosenwald School near Cedarville, in Hale County. Both communities now use the buildings as multipurpose meeting spaces.
Former students, teachers, and community leaders recently erected a historical marker for the Rosenwald School in Loachapoka in Lee County, widely believed to be the first Rosenwald School. Alumni of the school recalled their memories in a printed brochure distributed at the event. One former student, Charlie Ezell, recalled that he “helped make fires in the pot bellied stove.” Another student, Barbara Ervin, recalled, “My fourth grade teacher Miss Rebecca Jones had heard of a remedy to cure my asthma.” Student Judy Lockhart remembered that “all of our books were so worn that the pages would sometimes fall out as you turned the pages. But we respected each book for the next year’s class…. Walking to school sometimes our paper would get wet if it rained really hard.”
The Tuskegee University conference on June 14-16, 2012, will draw participants from across the nation. It will convene alumni, community leaders, historians, and preservationists to discuss the significance of the Rosenwald school movement and strategies for preserving both the remaining schools and their associated stories. This centennial event will strengthen the national Rosenwald network by linking alumni and preservationists throughout the rural South. The conference will include sessions about grant writing; exhibit and museum development; promotion and marketing; records conservation; partnership building; and creative reuse for Rosenwald schools. Individuals wanting more information about the history of Rosenwald schools can go online to www.rosenwaldschools.com. To get information on a specific school, individuals may visit the Rosenwald School database at Fisk University: rosenwald.fisk.edu. The database contains information from the Fisk University library where the Rosenwald School Building Fund collection is archived. Individuals wanting information on documented Rosenwald schools in Alabama, or wishing to provide information on a school in their community, can contact Dorothy Walker at dorothy.walker@preserveala.org or at (334) 230-2665.
This feature was previously published in Issue 104, Spring 2012.
About the Author
Dorothy Walker coordinates the documentation of Rosenwald Schools for the Alabama Historical Commission and serves as Alabama’s representative on the National Trust for Historic Preservation Rosenwald School Initiative and Task Force. Robert Gamble, standing editor of the “Southern Architecture and Preservation” department of Alabama Heritage, is senior architectural historian for the Alabama Historical Commission.
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