Hope Rosenwald School - South Carolina Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The Inscription is as follows:

Front;
This school, built in 1925-26 at a cost of $2,900, was one of more than 500 rural African-American schools in S.C. funded in part by the Julius Rosenwald Foundation between 1917 and 1932. The original two-acre lot for the school was donated by James H. Hope, Mary Hope Hipp, and John J. Hope. James H. Hope, then S.C. Superintendent of Education, was its longest-serving head, 1922-1947.

Reverse;
This two-room school, with grades 1-8 taught by two teachers, closed in 1954. In 1958 it was sold to the Jackson Community Center and Cemetery Association, comprised of nine members of the adjacant St. Paul A.M.E. Church. That group maintained the school for many years. It became the Hope Community Center in 2006 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

This marker is located in Pomaria, South Carolina, in Newberry County.
The marker is on Hope Station Road near Peak Road on the right when traveling south.

This marker was erected by The Hope School Community Center in 2010.

The Hope Rosenwald School is significant for its role in African-American education and social history in South Carolina between 1925 and 1954, and as a property that embodies the distinctive features of a significant architectural type and method of schoolhouse construction popular throughout the southern United States in the early twentieth century. Like other Rosenwald schools, the Hope Rosenwald School can trace its origins to the contentious debate over the education of southern African-Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the end of the American Civil War had brought about state-initiated funding and operation of some local schools for black children in the South, the policies emphasizing racial segregation during the Jim Crow era left southern blacks with few opportunities for a truly complete primary education and even fewer secondary school options. Among those who sought a method for insuring that black educational opportunities in the South might be improved was Julius Rosenwald, CEO of Sears & Roebuck and a trustee of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. At the request of Booker T. Washington, Rosenwald began a school building fund to benefit southern African-Americans, especially those in rural regions, and from 1917 to 1932, Rosenwald’s program led to the construction of more than 5300 public schools, teachers’ homes, and instructional shops in fifteen southern states, nearly 500 of which were located in South Carolina. Listed in the National Register October 3, 2007.

Marker Name: Hope Rosenwald School Marker Location: Roadside Type of Marker: Building Marker number: 36-20 County: Newberry

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