Rosenwald Schools

In 1915, Sears and Roebuck President, Julius Rosenwald established a matching grant fund in his name to construct better quality schools for African Americans throughout the South. Between 1917 and 1932, his fund assisted in the construction of over 5,000 school buildings, forever changing the rural Southern landscape. Nearly 500 buildings were constructed in South Carolina – 116 of those were built in the Pee Dee area. At a time when state support for educating African-American children was woefully inadequate, Rosenwald Schools played a critical role in educating South Carolina’s children.

Over one-third of African-American children in the South in the first half of the twentieth century passed through the doors of a Rosenwald School. Today, many of these schools of hope have disappeared from the landscape in South Carolina. Many became victims of neglect and abandonment as a result of the School Equalization Program in 1951 under Governor James Byrnes, which consolidated rural black schools by building state-of-the-art new schools in an effort to thwart integration.

There are currently four Rosenwald Schools that still exist in the Pee Dee Region, as identified by the South Carolina Department of Archives & History:

• Black Creek Rosenwald School – Black Creek Church Road in Mount Croghan; now a private residence across from Black Creek Baptist Church.
• Mt. Zion Rosenwald School – 5040 Liberty Chapel Road in Florence.
• Pleasant Hill Rosenwald School – S-17-29 Skillet Road in Dillon, near I-95.
• Rosenwald Dillon Colored High School – 901 S 9th Avenue in Dillon