Armstrong School, Tuskegee, Macon County

Aside from its importance as an educational institution, Armstrong School was part of the infamous US Syphilis Study. (Photo by Robin McDonald)

Just after the turn of the twentieth century, Rev. Ulysses Grant Mabson Sr. of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church partnered with Tuskegee Institute to build a schoolhouse on the church property that the congregation purchased in 1900. Constructed around 1905, Armstrong School was part of the Tuskegee Rural School Program, a predecessor to the Rosenwald School Program. The congregation built the schoolhouse behind the church building, next to the mid-twentieth-century cemetery. Armstrong School is significant for its association with education and its role in the US Public Health Service Syphilis Study in Macon County.