In the
1910s, Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald,
president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., became aware of
the sad state of education among African Americans
in the rural South. His response was establishment
of a fund that provided architectural plans and
matching grants that helped build more than 5,300
schools from Maryland to Texas between the late
1910s and 1932. North Carolina had more than 800
projects, more than any other state.

Alumni of Panther Branch School,
Wake County, July 2000

The Rosenwald
Schools Community Project

Rosenwald
schools are a special interest of the North
Carolina State Historic Preservation Office (HPO)
because they are tremendously important yet
quickly disappearing from the landscape. Since the
1980s, the HPO has been documenting Rosenwald
schools through comprehensive historic
architectural surveys of municipalities and
counties conducted in collaboration with local
governments. A more concerted effort by the HPO to
record the schools began after the North Carolina
Rosenwald Schools Community Project (RSCP) asked
the HPO to provide material for an exhibit that
was to be displayed during the nation’s first
regional conference on Rosenwald schools,
sponsored by the RSCP. The conference was held in
Charlotte in 2001, and the following year the HPO
collaborated with the RSCP on a smaller event held
in Raleigh that featured a gathering of alumni of
Wake County’s Rosenwald schools on a Sunday
afternoon and a lunch-time program made the next
day to Department of Cultural Resources (DCR)
staff.

A
Coordinated Effort to Document and Preserve
North Carolina’s Rosenwald Schools

As a
result of the strong, positive response to HPO
staff’s solicitation of information at the 2002
events in Raleigh, an organized program of
volunteer surveyors overseen by HPO staff was
developed. The HPO already had more than 40 files
on Rosenwald schools that had been compiled
through the comprehensive architectural survey
program and a dozen of the schools had been listed
in the National Register of Historic Places.
Volunteers selected one or more counties and
strived to document all of the Rosenwald schools
that had been built there. Over the next few years
they submitted data on scores of schools for
incorporation into the HPO’s architectural survey
files, which are part of the State Archives.

Ware Creek
School, Beaufort County

Pleasant Plains School,
Hertford County

The need for a
comprehensive survey of Rosenwald schools was
underscored by their placement on the National Trust
for Historic Preservation’s 2002 list of America’s 11
Most Endangered Historic Places. Since 1988, this
list, announced annually, has raised awareness and
rallied resources to save endangered sites in every
region of the country. When the 2002 list was
announced, the National Trust noted that the first
step in saving the remaining Rosenwald schools is a
systematic survey, coupled with creation of local
activist networks dedicated to implementing adaptive
uses of the buildings. In 2001, the National Trust
Southern Office established the Rosenwald School
Initiative to develop a network of private individuals
and organizations interested in preserving the
remaining schools. The HPO has been an active partner
in the initiative, enjoying a productive collaborative
relationship with the National Trust for many
years.

The HPO has not had the
financial resources to undertake a comprehensive
survey of the state’s Rosenwald schools, but the
agency has continued to work with citizens across
North Carolina to help them identify, preserve, and
celebrate the schools and the important heritage they
represent. HPO staff have continued to incorporate
data on the schools submitted by the public and to
work closely with individuals and groups striving to
preserve their schools. The HPO now has files on
almost 200 schools (of which about 125 remain
standing), while the status of approximately 200
others is known, both extant and lost. It is likely
that scores more remain, awaiting identification,
recognition, and preservation.

Princeton
Graded School, Johnston County

Russell School,
Durham County

Since
2014, the HPO has entered all of its data on North
Carolina’s Rosenwald schools into the survey
database it developed in the mid-2000s and all of
the recorded schools have been mapped in the HPO’s
geographic system, which is accessible to the
public at http://gis.ncdcr.gov/hpoweb/.
To date, the HPO has guided the preparation of
National Register nominations for 30 schools and
identified 38 others as potentially eligible for
listing while providing consultation assistance to
numerous individuals and organizations dedicated
to rehabilitating dozens of schools across the
state. In 2015, the Keeper of the National
Register approved a multiple property
documentation form prepared by HPO staff,
“Rosenwald Schools in North Carolina,” which will
facilitate future nominations of the state’s
Rosenwald schools to the National Register.

Also in
2015, the National Park Services awarded the HPO
an Underrepresented Communities Grant that is
being used, in part, to fund the preparation of
National Register nominations of six Rosenwald
schools. As a partner in this project, the
Conservation Trust for North Carolina has provided
an intern to conduct research needed for the
nominations.

The HPO
also has co-sponsored two conferences on North
Carolina’s Rosenwald schools: “A Gathering of
Rosenwald School Surveyors,” held November 15, 2003,
in Raleigh, and “Practical Advice for Preserving
Rosenwald Schools,” held November 18-19, 2005, in
Halifax County. In 2015, the HPO was a co-sponsor
with the National Trust for Historic Preservation
and others of the national Rosenwald schools
conference held in Durham, Sharing the
Past→Shaping the Future.

Collaboration between the HPO, citizens across North
Carolina, and private organizations such as the
National Trust for Historic Preservation and
Conservation Trust for North Carolina is essential
to the success of ongoing efforts to preserve the
state’s Rosenwald schools. We encourage anyone
interested in the preservation of our Rosenwald
schools to contact us to share information or
requests our assistance. Together we can continue to
celebrate the heritage of our Rosenwald schools and
further their preservation.

Rosenwald
Schools in North Carolina Web Map. Created by N.C.
State Historic Preservation Office staff for the 2015 National
Rosenwald School Conference in Durham, N.C. Use the site
to visit all known extant Rosenwald Schools in the state and
the known sites of many no longer standing. View the
buildings/sites in high resolution aerials and Street
View. Link to the Fisk University Rosenwald Fund Card
File Database for most schools. Link to National
Register nominations for the 30 that are listed in the
National Register, and see recent photographs of all National
Register and some other schools.