Rosenwald SchoolsLittle more than a century ago, deep in America’s rural South, a community-based movement ignited by two unexpected collaborators quietly grew to become so transformative, its influence shaped the educational and economic future of an entire generation of African American families.
Between 1917 and 1932, nearly 5,000 rural schoolhouses, modest one-, two-, and three-teacher buildings known as Rosenwald Schools, came to exclusively serve more than 700,000 black children over four decades. It was through the shared ideals and a partnership between Booker T. Washington, an educator, intellectual and prominent African American thought leader, and Julius Rosenwald, a German-Jewish immigrant who accumulated his wealth as head of the behemoth retailer, Sears, Roebuck & Company, that Rosenwald Schools would come to comprise more than one in five Black schools operating throughout the South by 1928. Only about 500 of these structures survive today, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Some schools serve as community centers, others have restoration projects underway with the support of grants from National Trust for Historic Preservation while others are without champions and in advance stages of disrepair. Eroding alongside their dwindling numbers is their legacy of forming an American education revolution. 
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Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington
Julius Rosenwald pictured with students in 1911, Louisville, KY.
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Nansemond County Training School
9307 Southwestern Boulevard | Site not open to the public
Two miles south stood the Nansemond County Training School, the first high school in the county for African American students. It was constructed in 1924 with $5,000 contributed by African American families, $11,500 in public money, and $1,500 from the Rosenwald Fund established in 1917 to build schools for African American students in the rural South. The building, with seven classrooms and one auditorium, contained an elementary and secondary school. Hannibal E. Howell was its first principal, serving for 42 years. In 1964, the name was changed to Southwestern High School and after the racial integration of county schools, became Southwestern Intermediate School.
Booker T. Washington School
204 Walnut Street. Original location at 201 Lee Street. | Site not open to the public.
The Suffolk School Board opened Booker T. Washington School here in 1913 to serve African American children in grades 1-8. Ninth grade was added during the 1920s. Overcrowding prompted the construction of a larger building here in 1925. Black residents successfully campaigned for the addition of a senior high curriculum, and the first high school class graduated in 1937. Administrator J.F. Peele, Jr. provided leadership for four decades. Again overcrowded, the school relocated to a new building one and a half miles east in 1953. The last high school class graduated in 1969. Washington became an intermediate school and later an elementary school.
Booker T. WashingtonExcerpt from History.com
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was born into slavery and rose to become a leading African American intellectual of the
19 century, founding Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (Now Tuskegee University) in 1881 and the National Negro Business League two decades later. Washington advised Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. His infamous conflicts with Black leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois over segregation caused a stir, but today, he is remembered as the most influential African American speaker of his time. Booker T. Washington’s Parents and Early Life Booker Taliaferro Washington was born on April 5, 1856 in a hut in Franklin County, Virginia. His mother was a cook for the plantation’s owner. His father, a white man, was unknown to Washington. At the close of the Civil War, all the enslaved people owned by James and Elizabeth Burroughs—including 9-year-old Booker, his siblings, and his mother—were freed. Jane moved her family to Malden, West Virginia. Soon after, she married Washington Ferguson, a free Black man. Booker T. Washington’s Education In Malden, Washington was only allowed to go to school after working from 4-9 AM each morning in a local salt works before class. It was at a second job in a local coalmine where he first heard two fellow workers discuss the Hampton Institute, a school for formerly enslaved people in southeastern Virginia founded in 1868 by Brigadier General Samuel Chapman. Chapman had been a leader of Black troops for the Union during the Civil War and was dedicated to improving educational opportunities for African Americans. In 1872, Washington walked the 500 miles to Hampton, where he was an excellent student and received high grades. He went on to study at Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C., but had so impressed Chapman that he was invited to return to Hampton as a teacher in 1879. It was Chapman who would refer Washington for a role as principal of a new school for African Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama: The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, today’s Tuskegee University. Washington assumed the role in 1881 at age 25 and would work at The Tuskegee Institute until his death in 1915. It was Washington who hired George Washington Carver to teach agriculture at Tuskegee in 1896. Carver would go on to be a celebrated figure in Black history in his own right, making huge advances in botany and farming technology. Booker T. Washington Beliefs And Rivalry with W.E.B. Du Bois Life in the post-Reconstruction era South was challenging for Black people. Discrimination was rife in the age of Jim Crow Laws. Exercising the right to vote under the 15 Amendment was dangerous, and access to jobs and education was severely limited. With the dawn of the Ku Klux Klan, the threat of retaliatory violence for advocating for civil rights was real. In perhaps his most famous speech, given on September 18, 1895, Washington told a majority white audience in Atlanta that the way forward for African Americans was self-improvement through an attempt to “dignify and glorify common labor.” He felt it was better to remain separate from whites than to attempt desegregation as long as whites granted their Black countrymen and women access to economic progress, education, and justice under U.S. courts: "The wisest of my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than artificial forcing. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than to spend a dollar in an opera house." His speech was sharply criticized by W.E.B. Du Bois, who repudiated what he called “The Atlanta Compromise” in a chapter of his famous 1903 book, “The Souls of Black Folk.” Opposition to Washington’s views on race inspired the Niagara Movement (1905-1909). Du Bois would go on to found the NAACP in 1909. Because of Washington’s outsized stature in the Black community, dissenting views were strongly squashed. Du Bois and others criticized Washington’s harsh treatment of rival Black newspapers and Black thinkers who dared to challenge his opinions and authority. |
1925:
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Inside the lobby at the 204 Walnut Street location is a life-sized bronze statue of Booker T. Washington.
The Booker T. Washington High School Alumni Association raised the $6,000 cost of the project, which was sculpted by Dr. Roderic Taylor in 1999. |
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Nansemond Collegiate Institute
East Washington Street and North 5th Street | Building no longer stands
Here stood the Nansemond Collegiate Institute, founded in 1890 as the Nansemond Industrial Institute by Rev. William W. Gaines to provide local black children with an education, because free public schools were closed to them. Eventually the institute offered elementary, secondary, and normal school courses of instruction. In 1927 a public school for black students was opened; competition for students and a series of disastrous fires forced the institute to close in 1939.
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East Suffolk School138 South 6th Street | Building is now part of the City of Suffolk Parks and Recreation Department
Open to public | Parking Available Between 1926 and 1927, African Americans raised $3,300 toward the East Suffolk School, which opened with T.J. Johnson as principal. In addition to public money, the Julius Rosenwald Fund also provided $1,500 to assist the effort. Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, established the fund in 1917 and helped pay for the construction of more than 5,000 schools for African Americans in 15 southern states. In 1939, at the request of the local community, the Works Progress Administration's “Pump Priming Program” funded the addition of the County Training School, later known as East Suffolk High School, with the first class graduating in 1940. The last class graduated in 1965.
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Florence Bowser
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Huntersville Rosenwald School
Old Town Point Road and Hampton Roads Parkway - Building no longer stands
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“The Huntersville School was built in 1930-31 as a Rosenwald School. The Julius Rosenwald fund provided $1,000 toward the construction, with contributions from African Americans and the local government provided the rest of its $7,000 cost. Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck & Company, established the fund in 1917 and helped pay for the construction of more than 5,000 schools for African Americans in 15 southern states. The Huntersville School was one of the last built in Virginia, as the program ended in 1932. It included classroom space for four teachers and was named for its first principal, Joseph S. Gibson.”
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Col. Fred Cherry
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Mack Benn Jr. Elementary School
1253 Nansemond Parkway | School – not open to public
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Mack Benn Jr. was born in 1927 and graduated from East Suffolk High School in 1946. After completing a military tour of duty in Korea, he returned home and earned a master’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. and completed additional graduate work at Old Dominion University. He worked for Suffolk Public Schools for 35 years in many positions including teacher, athletic director, assistant principal and principal, and assistant superintendent. In 1869 he was appointed as the first African-American superintendent in Suffolk. In 1998, the year after his death, the city opened Mack Benn Jr. Elementary School in his honor. Info found on social media: Mack Benn, Jr. was born in 1927 and attended Suffolk Public Schools, graduating from East Suffolk High School in 1946. Mack Benn, Jr. served Suffolk Public Schools for 35 years in many positions, including coach, teacher, athletic director, assistant principal and principal. In addition, he was the first African-American superintendent in Suffolk Public Schools. In 1998, Mack Benn, Jr. Elementary School opened, named in honor of Mack Benn, Jr.
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