Join Preservation Virginia, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the AMMD Pine Grove School Community, the Campbell County Training School Complex, the Julius Rosenwald and Rosenwald Schools National Historic Park Campaign, the National Park Service, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Virginia Humanities, and the Woodville Rosenwald School Foundation for a free webinar to provide updates on activities, initiatives and threats related to Rosenwald Schools in Virginia, as well as information on grants and other funding sources.
Created by Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute, the Rosenwald rural school building program was an initiative intended to narrow racial schooling gaps in the South by constructing better, more-accessible schools for African Americans. Between 1912 and 1932, the program helped produce 5,357 new educational facilities for African Americans across fifteen southern states, providing almost 700,000 African American children in rural, isolated communities with state-of-the-art facilities at a time when little to no public money was put toward black education. In Virginia, the initiative helped fund 382 schools and support buildings in seventy-nine counties. According to a 2019 survey conducted by Preservation Virginia, out of the 382 Rosenwald Schools built in Virginia, 126 are still standing and 256 have been demolished. In 2002, the National Trust for Historic Preservation placed all Rosenwald schools in the United States on its list of most endangered historic buildings.
