Rosenwald schools were once an important part of the social fabric of African-American communities in the South. Along highways, especially in the eastern portion of Texas, many of the buildings still stand abandoned in cotton fields. Some have reverted to other uses, but a few still serve as school buildings. They are subtle reminders of America’s segregated past and the value of education.
“It used to be that children didn’t mind walking five miles to school,” says Karen Riles with a laugh. A researcher at the Austin History Center, Riles has made a survey of the Rosenwald schools in Texas. For rural children and minority children in particular, an education was not taken for granted and usually came at great sacrifice for the family.
Between 1912 and 1948, the Julius Rosenwald Foundation helped build more than 5,000 rural schools in 15 Southern states. In Texas, the foundation provided challenge grants for 464 schools, 31 teachers homes, and 32 industrial training shops between 1920 and 1931. Riles points to the schools in Calvert and Yoakum as part of the enduring legacy of the program.
Julius Rosenwald was the millionaire CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Co. when he met Booker T. Washington and became a supporter of Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. As a high school dropout and industrialist, Rosenwald knew the value of a good education to the potential growth of the country. Rosenwald eventually gave away more than $28 million to build schools and libraries.
Critics have said that the schools only perpetuated separate and unequal education facilities. Washington and Rosenwald saw the grants as seed money to encourage individuals and governments to take responsibility for educational programs. The result was offering a carrot instead of using a stick to lure boards of education to provide better facilities for African-American children.
“The wonderful thing about the schools was that they provided better facilities,” Riles says. “The buildings were the most modern designs, at least for the day.” Austere by today’s standards, the schools were built around plans based on the number of teachers assigned to the classes. One to four teachers were hired for most of the schools, but a few had as many as 12 instructors.
Riles says that many of the schools were built in freedman communities and were an expression of the community’s determination to provide a better education for its children. At a minimum, each school had a large classroom; a separate room for industrial training; and a smaller room, often the teacher’s kitchen, to provide home-science classes to the girls.
The buildings were often constructed using volunteer labor. Communities held rallies and fundraisers for the needed capital. Tax money accounted for two-thirds of the construction costs. Besides classrooms, the schools also had playgrounds, sports fields, and garden plots. Even though most of the Rosenwald schools were for elementary grades, the grant program also supported the county training schools – high schools that taught industrial and agricultural trades.
The Rosenwald schools still invoke a sense of pride in the former students, Riles says. She has documented 30 buildings still standing. “I think there could be many more that we don’t know about,” she says. “Some are really in the backwoods. The students have forgotten about them or don’t realize the historical significance.” Most of the schools were closed because better roads made school consolidation possible and because of desegregation in the Sixties.
In Texas, Bowie County in the northeast corner of the state had 32 Rosenwald schools. Smith County around Tyler had 22 schools built with Rosenwald funds. Two of Riles’ favorites are St. Mary’s Colony School and Hopewell School on TX 21 south of Bastrop. The Lockhart Vocational High School or Carver High School, 1104 E. Market St. in Lockhart, was built in the 1920s of materials recycled from a white school. It served the community as a county training school, then an elementary school, and finally used for Head Start programs until it was abandoned in 1997.
Other Rosenwald buildings are known to exist in Bee, Bowie, Cass, Cherokee, DeWitt, Franklin, Gregg, Grimes, Guadalupe, Liberty, Matagorda, Milam, Navarro, Rains, Robertson, Tarrant, Travis, Wharton, and Williamson counties. If you have information on a Rosenwald school in Texas, contact Karen Riles at karen.riles@ci.austin.tx.us.
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This article appears in February 20 • 2004.
