Cartersville, Virginia

— Cumberland County —

Julius Rosenwald, a former president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., continued the efforts made by numerous philanthropists to bring education to African Americans in the South. During the early 1900s, funding for schools was scarce; the South had half as much per capita wealth as the rest of the country, and a third more children. Added to this was the expense of providing a dual system of education. In 1912 Rosenwald, who had donated heavily to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, authorized Dr. Booker T. Washington, president of Tuskegee, to use some of these funds for the building of schools for African-American students across the South. The Julius Rosenwald Fund was eventually founded in 1917, with the stipulation that the fund would cease 25 years after Rosenwald's death. Dr. Fletcher B. Dressler of Peabody College was contracted to design functional and attractive plans for a variety of school types. In Southside Virginia, the schools were primarily one-, two- or three-roomed, built of frame construction and siding. They were usually painted a gray-blue with white trim around large windows spaces. The larger schools featured a community room used for gatherings and neighborhood health services. The New Hope School on this site is one of several Rosenwald schools that still stands today in Cumberland County.

Eventually through the Rosenwald Fund, 5,358 modern rural black schools were built, seating at any one time 663,795 pupils in 15 states. After spending $22 million dollars, the Rosenwald program officially ended in 1932. The records of the Rosenwald Fund and the architectural plans are now archived at Fisk University in Nashville, TN.

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(Above) Rosenwald School at New Hope.

(Left) 1958 graduates of Pine Grove School, a Rosenwald School in Cumberland. Left to right: William Matthews, Gloria Miller, and Tyrone West.

(Above Right) Rosenwald School at Cartersville as it stands today.

Pine Grove School photo courtesy of Mrs. Robert Scales. Rosenwald School at New Hope photo courtesy of The Jackson Davis Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.

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