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Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009

Historic designation for Rosenwald schools could preserve part of black history

The tin roof of the little red schoolhouse called Sugar Hill is caving in. The mossy pillars beneath it are starting to buckle.

But this school near Red Bone, a community near Barnesville, was once a pillar of a black community, built in 1925 when rural black residents rarely had schools at all. It was established with the help of the president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., a Chicago magnate who had never been to Lamar County.

His name, Julius Rosenwald, is rarely listed among the great benefactors of the early 20th century — the Pulitzers, Carnegies and Rockefellers who built libraries and created national parks.

But perhaps the omission is due to the nature of Rosenwald’s contribution: He helped fund the establishment of more than 5,000 schools for black children in the South between 1912 and 1932.

Among them were about 45 schools or homes for black teachers in Middle Georgia.

Most of them are gone. But this fall, the National REgister of Historic Places officially recognized the historic significance of the Rosenwald schools in Georgia, paving the way for the protection of those that survive.

Although Sugar Hill is collapsing and half the school is obscured in brush, the beauty of its design shines inside. Look past the bird nests over the interior doorways, and you see classrooms dominated by windows that bring the towering trees and broad countryside close.

“I think there’s a tremendous pride among people who attended Rosenwald schools. They often talk about them as their most important years.” said Jeanne Cyriaque, who works for the state Historic Preservation Division as African-American programs coordinator.

“Back then, it was exciting to go to school,” said Mabel Smith, who attended first grade at Darby Rosenwald School near Bolingbroke. The long walk was a ritual. Smith’s uncle, who raised her, would sometimes build a fire by the road on very cold days so the children could warm themselves on the way.

Oscar Shockley, 79, never attended any school by Darby Rosenwald, even though for part of his school years he had to travel 16 miles round trip for class. His education ended in the eighth grade because that’s where the school left off.

“We had no reliable bus and no money to pay anyone to take us” to the black high school in Forsyth, he said.

But Shockley remembers the eighth-grade graduation, held at nearby Job Chapel AME Church. “There was a grand ceremony and the church was full of people,” he said. “We marched and sang.”

That church is where Shockley’s mother attended school in the years before the Rosenwald building. When the new school was built in 1930, it took the church’s name on state records.

The school’s local name was a combination of its benefactors: Rosenwald, and the white man who donated the land, Shockley said.

State of the art

The anti-Semitism experienced by Julius Rosenwald, a second-generation Jewish immigrant, led him to identify with the racism that Southern blacks faced. (For example, the year Darby Rosenwald School was built, Georgia spent just $6.38 on the education of each black schoolchild, compared with $35.42 on each white child.)

Rosenwald provided partial payment — an average of $400 per school — for 259 schools in 103 Georgia counties, according to the National Register application that was recently approved.

But each Rosenwald grant required matching efforts from the local community: The land had to be donated, and part of the costs had to be paid by the board of education and the black community.

Shockley, who finished school in 1941, remembers how his neighbors raised money for the Darby Rosenwald School, and a black man named George Washington volunteered to construct much of the building.

To receive Rosenwald money, a local school board also had to agree to accept and maintain the new school.

“(The Rosenwald Fund) made a concerted effort to really sell these schools to the local county,” Cyriaque said. “They did that by making them industrial schools.” Teaching students to cook, sew, farm and build improved the labor pool.

But Rosenwald’s generosity was not always welcome. Georgia newspaper editorials accused Rosenwald of encouraging interracial marriage and communism. Gov. Eugene Talmadge used racial and ethnic epithets to describe the Chicago benefactor, according to the national register application.

Most Rosenwald schools replaced “field schools” that were run inside black churches.

Early Rosenwald schools were small and wooden, but by the 1920s more of the schools were built with brick. Most of them housed at least six teachers and featured a small auditorium or community space, Cyriaque said. Many had kitchens. They were known for their walls of windows.

“They were much better equipped than other black schools,” she said. “They had the latest sanitary methods, proper lighting and playgrounds. They were considered state of the art.”

Thelma McCoy, 78, attended two Rosenwald schools in Houston County: King’s Chapel School until sixth grade, then Perry County Training School, where she graduated in 1949.

McCoy’s mother had attended the old church school at King’s Chapel, and she was very happy about the new building, McCoy said. “It had plenty of windows, plenty of room,” she said. “The school was put together real well.”

Great teachers, limited resources

Like King’s Chapel, many of the churches that predated the Rosenwald Schools also outlived them. King’s Chapel Road dead-ends in front of what was once the school. Only charred beams and twisted tin remain of the Jerusalem School, behind Jerusalem Church in Houston County.

Ellie Loudermilk, a Perry historian and educator, is mapping the Rosenwald schools in Houston and gathering information about them for a Perry Historical Society museum and archive. She said many of them were located near settlements of black farm workers on major plantations.

McCoy’s father worked on a farm near the King’s Chapel school, which had one teacher and a pot-bellied stove for the cold students to stoke each morning.

James B. Hubbard grew up in the tenant farming community around Walden in south Bibb County, attending first and second grade at a Rosenwald school called Mount Hope.

Hubbard remembers his teachers being stretched thin, with each grade receiving only about an hour of instruction.

As at many Rosenwald schools, the older students helped teach the younger ones, and the older girls prepared lunch. The days began with devotions.

The meals were often the most filling and nutritious of the day. “You had hot chocolate sometimes, and some days you would get an orange or an apple,” Hubbard said. “Those things were special. You didn’t get fruit at home until Christmas.”

But despite these advantages, the Rosenwald schools still didn’t offer an education equal to what whites received. The books were battered, and some of them had racial epithets scrawled in them. There were no buses for black students.

“White kids rode the school bus, and they’d spit out the window at you, so we’d have to get away from the road when we saw the school bus,” Hubbard said of his walk to Mount Hope. “And when it rained hard, you couldn’t get to school because the ravine in front of the school would flood.”

Many of the surviving Rosenwald students attended the schools long after they were new.

By the time Joyce Henry Williams graduated in 1952 from Vienna High and Industrial School, which still stands, it was overcrowded and classes were taught on the stage. There was no cafeteria until an Army surplus barracks was acquired by the principal — who later married Williams, after she returned to the school as a teacher.

Most former students remember the names of their Rosenwald schoolteachers, who were important in the community.

Hazel Jackson, head counselor at Perry High School, attended sixth and seventh grade in an “annex” that was originally a Rosenwald school. She remembers a teacher there, Mrs. Batt, encouraging her writing.

“She tried to pull the best out of you,” Jackson said. “I still remember her reading to us about Pandora’s box.”

By the time Jackson attended the wooden school, it was in bad shape. The cafeteria was a quarter-mile down a dirt road.

“I never liked that school,” she said, “It was dim, cold, the floors were raggedy. I never thought it was good enough for us. It looked like something nobody cared about.”

Jackson’s eyes filled with tears as she spoke. “That’s why Mrs. Batt was so special: Because even though we were in this run-down school, she made you feel important. ... It just didn’t matter that people thought we were second, because we knew who we were.”

Hunting the schools

Cyriaque began her research on Georgia’s Rosenwald schools seven years ago, even before the National Trust listed Rosenwald schools as one of the 11 most threatened resources in the country.

“When I traveled and met anybody, I would ask about schools in the area, and a lot of them emerged that way,” Cyriaque said. “It’s almost like a diaspora.”

Cyriaque said she couldn’t find enough information to be sure what happened to some schools. More buildings could still be found. She knows of a couple of possible buildings that might be the Cochran School.

But Georgia has more surviving Rosenwald schools than average: 19 percent of the schools are known to still stand, compared with just 10 percent in most states, Cyriaque said.

Vienna County Training School was one of the first in the state to be nominated to the National Register, Cyriaque said. It was used continuously as a school from 1926 until 2004, serving as the county’s black high school until 1970 and a prekindergarten afterward.

It now houses the offices of the county board of education and serves as the Dooly County Family Resource Center, which offers after-school programs, said Janet Joiner, community development director for the city of Vienna.

“It’s still seen as a keystone of the black community,” she said.

In Forsyth and Fort Valley, buildings that were once Rosenwald schools became part of early black colleges. In Forsyth, a teacher’s cottage built with Rosenwald funds is now used by community agencies that assist schoolchildren.

Margaret Thompson of Milner is leading the charge to restore the Sugar Hill School. A group formed last month plans to register as a nonprofit and is awaiting feedback from Sugar Hill AME, which owns the school, about what the congregation would like to see happen there.

Community ideas have included turning the building into an arts center, activities center or small library, Thompson said. But part of the decision hinges on who will maintain it and how much it will cost, she said.

Thompson hopes the school can become a place for young people to learn how much their ancestors struggled to succeed.

McCoy said, “When you went to school, you didn’t have the best of books and you know, it’s a wonder we learned anything. ... I look back and think of all the things we endured, but yet in spite of everything, you made it.”

To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.