Abandoned African American school in South Carolina

Howard Junior High School - Shiloh School, Prosperity South Carolina

Date added: March 05, 2023 Categories: South Carolina School

Shiloh Church was incorporated in approximately 1832 in Prosperity, Newberry County, South Carolina. The congregation worshipped under a brush-arbor for several years before building a one-story wooden structure and becoming affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church. The members of the new church organized a Board of Trustees for a school and taught classes in the church building until the 1880s. Facilities for the school were sparse, though students had heat, "plain wooden benches with no backs, water pails and dippers." Under these conditions, the Shiloh School was used three or four months of the year during the winter. According to A History of Prosperity, the state, county and local school district allocated no funding for the Shiloh School. School trustees, usually composed of parents and other members of the church, were responsible for paying the teacher's salary that ranged from $10 to $20 per month. Early teachers included Mrs. Alice Bedenbaugh McMorris, a graduate of the Hampton Institute in Virginia, and Professor Lawson Moore, a graduate of Allen University in Columbia.

Between 1880 and 1899, the Shiloh Church and School underwent many physical changes. The congregation discontinued use of the one-story wooden structure, built a two-story wooden structure for the school, and constructed a separate building for the church. In 1907, the P.E. Wise family gave 2.7 acres to the Shiloh School trustees "in trust for the purpose of a site for a school house to be used for the education of freedmen and children irrespective of race or color." Several years later, the school trustees asked both the county and the local school district for financial assistance and were told that to receive such funding, the school property had to be transferred to Newberry School District Number 14.

In 1924-1925, the Howard Junior High School was built on the site of the earlier two-story wooden school. Initially, the school was open for seven months of the year, and by the early 1940s, it remained open for nine months. This nine-month session was facilitated by a six-week summer session which allowed the school to start its academic year in the late fall and accommodate the local agricultural economy. Though money from the Rosenwald Fund improved the condition of education for blacks in Prosperity, county funding at the time was still at a minimum. Graduates of Howard Junior High who wished to finish school were required to provide their own transportation to Newberry to attend the Drayton Street High School. This dual system of education existed in the county until the 1970-71 school year when South Carolina schools were fully integrated.

Building Description

Howard Junior High School or Shiloh School, located at 431 Shiloh Street immediately adjacent to the town limits of the small Newberry County, South Carolina town of Prosperity, is a wood frame, double-pile, linear building set upon an open brick pier foundation that is covered with a five-V-crimp metal-clad roof. It features exposed rafter tails and gable end knee brackets. Oriented in an easterly direction, the building's setting today is still largely rural. The building is located adjacent to Shiloh A.M.E. Church, owner of the building, and is at least partially surrounded by the church's cemetery and mature oak trees.

The original segment of the building, located to the north of the southernmost main entrance, features a lateral gabled balloon frame structure clad with weatherboard siding. To either end, [north and south] of the original block are recessed entry pavilions consisting of one-bay wide nested gable blocks with rooflines that are recessed or set back from the east elevation and engaged to the main building roof on the west [rear] elevation. Each of these entry pavilions features a small, engaged porch with a single square wood post support. The southernmost entry pavilion is still evident; however, when a large historic addition was placed on the south end of the original building Ca. 1935, the former open-end entry became an inset or recessed entrance near the center of the building's facade. Along the east elevation of the original building are two banks of six large windows that indicate the location of interior classroom spaces. Each of the window frames contained a nine-over-nine light, double-hung sash window system, but most are currently missing. While some sash and muntins remain, no glass panes are present. The entry pavilion on the north end of the building contains two small single windows placed high upon the wall of the entry and cloakroom, respectively, while a paired window illuminates the rear [industrial] room. The windows on the south wall of the southern entry pavilion have either been closed or were altered to accommodate interior function at the time of the ca. 1935 addition. The west [rear] elevation features bracketed shed-roofed entries that flank the five-bay wide window banks that illuminate the building's rear classrooms. A large central brick chimney pierces the building's metal roof ridge, while a smaller, single-flue chimney rises along the rear slope where the north entry pavilion's roof and the main roof engage or intersect.

The interior of the original building reveals a four-classroom plan with wood floors, vertical beaded board wainscoting, horizontally applied beaded board walls, simple window and door surrounds, and partitions featuring pocketed window and blackboard panels that when opened allowed for visual unity within the spaces. An element common to the various Rosenwald school plans, Howard Junior High [Shiloh] School still has that interior plan in place; however, most of the interior window and blackboard panels have been removed. The upper wall pockets that once accommodated these panels are still evident, as is the early or original paint scheme of gray wainscoting and white walls. As stated earlier, the entry pavilions contain an entry hall, cloakroom/library and industrial classroom.

Sometime in the mid-1930s, a need for additional classroom space produced a two-classroom building addition on the south end of the original structure. The addition was constructed with similar architectural treatment and features an identical roof slope with exposed rafter tails and knee brackets along the south elevation's roofline. This section contains banks of six windows on the east and west elevations that are of equal size and pane configuration as on the original building. The south end of the addition contains a cloakroom for each classroom. Each of these anterooms contains a small window that is evident on the addition's southern exterior elevation. A small square louvered vent, identical to those on the original block, is located near the gable's peak. A brick chimney rises along the roof ridge of the addition at the intersecting walls of the classrooms and cloakrooms.

Black education in the South prior to Rosenwald

Separate education for black children in South Carolina can be traced to the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the 1970-1971 school year when South Carolina schools were officially integrated. Before the conclusion of the Civil War, South Carolina had never established a public school system for either white or black students. In 1865 the Freedmen's Bureau mandated that each Southern state provide formal schooling for freed blacks and appoint a superintendent of public schools. J.K. Jillson, a white Republican from Massachusetts, was named South Carolina's Superintendent of Education in 1868. Dealing with the contentious political climate of the Reconstruction era, Jillson had limited control over the daily operation of local schools, evident in the educational facilities for black children through the end of the nineteenth century.

Northern Philanthropy

By the end of the nineteenth century, men like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, George F. Peabody, John F. Slater and Julius Rosenwald had amassed enough fortunes to help finance education programs throughout the southern states. Motives for such philanthropy were to preserve educational opportunities for blacks, not to promote or provide racial equality. These programs did not challenge school segregation directly, but instead challenged the racial ideology behind segregation. Education for southern blacks was the paramount concern for these men as evidenced by the goals of their respective foundations: Carnegie concentrated on providing library services, Rockefeller funded public schools and colleges, Peabody established an educational fund, and Slater funded industrial education for freedmen. Additionally, Miss Anna T. Jeanes, a Quaker philanthropist from Philadelphia, contributed to improving education for southern blacks by donating money to aid rural schools. This initial donation prompted Jeanes to start her own Rural School Fund and employees of her program became known as "Jeanes Teachers." Along with these efforts, Julius Rosenwald established a fund to construct schoolhouses throughout the South and in doing so, provided educational opportunities for thousands of black students and teachers over the course of twenty years.

Julius Rosenwald and the Rosenwald Fund

The son of immigrant parents, Julius Rosenwald was born in Springfield, Illinois on August 12, 1862. Rosenwald attended public school until the age of seventeen when he began his business career after only two years of high school. Serving as an apprentice in an uncles' clothing firm, Rosenwald learned the business and in five years was an independent clothing merchant. By the 1890s Rosenwald was supporting his wife and family in a comfortable middle-class home. At about the - same time, Rosenwald borrowed $37,500 and invested it in a fledging mail-order company started by Richard Sears. Rosenwald soon became vice president, then CEO of Sears & Roebuck, and his original investment in the company grew exponentially during his lifetime.

According to friends and colleagues, Rosenwald exhibited a spirit of philanthropy from very early in life and saw helping those less fortunate than him as a moral obligation. As early as 1910, Rosenwald gained interest in the general welfare of blacks in the South. Some of this interest can be attributed to two specific books on the educational needs of southern blacks: the biography of William H. Baldwin, Jr., a northern white man who devoted himself to promoting black education in the South, and Up From Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T. Washington. Also during that year Rosenwald became a trustee of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (today Tuskegee University) and routinely aided the Institute with monetary gifts on behalf of rural schools. These funds led to the erection of sixteen YMCA buildings and one YWCA for blacks. Rosenwald maintained in contact with Washington until the latter's death, and remained on the board of Tuskegee until his own death in 1932.

As part of his fiftieth birthday celebration in 1912, Julius Rosenwald donated $25,000 to Washington to support "Offshoots of Tuskegee." These offshoots were normal schools that trained teachers for industrial education. When Washington distributed the funds, he retained $2,100 that would be used to aid rural schoolhouse construction programs in several counties near the Tuskegee Institute. Experimenting with the school construction program, Washington noted that many people who could not give money volunteered to give "half day or a day's work and others would give material in the way of nails, brick, lime, etc." Rosenwald approved of Washington's plan and agreed to enlarge the program and in August 1914, he contributed $30,000 to aid in building 100 rural schoolhouses. The conditions for these schools were identical to the original experimental schools and were as follows:

• black residents of the selected school districts were required to raise enough money to match or exceed the amount requested from Rosenwald;

• the approval and cooperation of the state, county, or township school officers were required;

• all property, including land, money, and other voluntary contributions by blacks, was to be deeded to the local public school authorities;

• the school building to be erected had to be approved by Tuskegee's Extension Department; and

• the efforts in each state were to be coordinated by the state agents of Negro Education and Jeanes Fund supervisors.

Soon Rosenwald shifted from an individual donor to the president of a foundation devoted to improving educational prospects for blacks in the South. In 1917, Rosenwald began his philanthropic work with the incorporation of the Julius Rosenwald Fund. During this time Rosenwald worked with Washington and the Tuskegee Institute to construct more school buildings for blacks in rural southern communities. These buildings followed an architecturally distinct "Tuskegee Plan" for industrial education. Buildings constructed between 1913 and 1920 featured hipped and clipped-gable rooflines and central entrances protected by projecting gable or shed porch roofs. Buildings featured a battery of windows grouped as five to seven double-hung sash windows. Reflecting the Tuskegee-style curriculum intended for the new schools, plans included space for industrial education, most often providing a smaller classroom for girls' domestic science work as part of the school building and locating boys' vocational work in a separate structure. The Tuskegee plans also introduced the concept of classifying schools by their number of teachers, as opposed to the number of classrooms in order to emphasize that schools provided workrooms, cloakrooms, and in larger schools, auditoriums and offices. For instance, one-teacher schools also included an industrial classroom, kitchen, library, and cloakrooms in addition to the small academic classroom.

In 1920, the Rosenwald Fund reorganized its building program and ended its direct relationship with Tuskegee. In its reorganization, the Fund required that the schools it aided met specific minimum Standards for the site size and length of school term, and also had new blackboards and desks for each classroom in addition to two sanitary privies. School grants were based on the number of teachers employed, ranging from $500 for a one-teacher school to a maximum of $2,100 for a school of ten or more teachers. Additionally, as with Rosenwald's initial partnership with Washington and the Tuskegee Institute, local blacks had to contribute cash and in-kind contributions of material labor to match the Rosenwald grant. This requirement reflected the "faith in the power of self-help" that Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald shared. Both men believed that personal sacrifices of hard-earned cash, lumber, and labor would strengthen rural African-Americans' commitment to their communities and help resist a dependence on full public or philanthropic funding.

During these years, rather than build schools in the Tuskegee style, the Rosenwald Fund committed to new Community School Plans. Though many changes were made, some of these plans incorporated earlier methods utilized under the Tuskegee partnership. However, the Community School Plans altered several earlier design plans: gable roofs replaced the hipped and clipped-gable rooflines, and the plans were exclusively for one-story structures. Windows were limited to one side of the building to ensure that one stream of light falling from left to right would illuminate the blackboard and desks. In addition, the new plans maximized natural light by using narrower window framing in the sashes and much taller windows that stretched from the interior wainscot cap up to the eaves. To secure adequate ventilation, "breeze" windows set high under the eaves or on interior walls provided cross ventilation by drawing air from the windows across the room and into a hallway or adjacent classroom. New plans also called for sliding doors and removable blackboards to open up interior space and auditoriums for school and community events.

Rosenwald schools under the Community School Plans also followed specific plans for paint color and interior design. The exteriors of the buildings were simple and undecorated. Interior color schemes utilized light bands of color to accentuate the effect of the windows on light levels and students' vision. Specific school equipment designs also ensured that building occupants could fully utilize every aspect of the building. Blackboards along three walls allowed for teacher instruction and let students practice assignments. Standard school-issue desks replaced rough wooden slabs, pews, and benches typical of many other black schools. In addition to making these new buildings affordable for local communities and modern in appearance, the simplicity in design was a progressive concept denoting order, rationality, and functionalism. Schools built according to the Community School Plans remain the most recognizable Rosenwald schools, and the Howard Junior High School in Prosperity, Newberry County, fits this design.

From 1917 to 1928 Rosenwald served as president and treasurer of the Fund, managing school building projects and expenses. By 1928 Rosenwald realized that "philanthropy had in itself become a business," and Edwin R. Embree, former director and vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation, became president of the Rosenwald Fund and hired a full-time staff. During this time the Fund began to decrease aid to rural schools, with the largest cuts occurring between 1928 and 1932. Rosenwald, Embree, and the board of trustees agreed that if they continued construction grants indefinitely, southern school boards would remain dependent on Rosenwald aid and contributions from local blacks and may neglect their full responsibility for black public schools. In 1932 Embree announced that no further construction funds would be granted, and in 1937 the last Rosenwald School was built in Warm Springs, Georgia at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Julius Rosenwald firmly believed that the generation that contributed to the making of wealth should be the one to profit from it. In this respect, he wanted money to be spent when it was donated rather than left to accumulate until it had multiplied for use in the remote future. Because of these strong beliefs, Rosenwald disapproved of perpetual trusts and directed that his Fund's officers spend its assets to meet its goals in the present time. In 1948, the Julius Rosenwald Fund distributed its last grants and quietly disappeared from existence. On average the Rosenwald Fund provided only about fifteen percent of the cost of each project, with local black and white communities and tax funds assuming the rest of the costs. By its close, the Fund contributed to a total of 5,357 public schools, shops and teachers' homes in 883 counties of fifteen Southern states. From 1914-1932, South Carolina housed 481 Rosenwald Schools, the third largest number of any state.

In addition to meeting academic requirements, the Rosenwald Fund required that schools maintain a minimum of two acres around the building with the school as a focal point. Practice gardens and farm plots supported the industrial training offered at the schools, and also modeled proper landscaping for rural homes in the immediate community. Affiliation with a local African American church was also common and in fact, was the case with Howard Junior High School. In many instances, Rosenwald schools sat adjacent to or near a church, and often the congregation and its minister spearheaded the local building campaign and donated the land. Additionally, and again the case with Howard Junior High, Rosenwald schools were often located on the site of an earlier African-American school. Because of its positioning, the Howard Junior High reflects the growth of African-American education from the 1830s through the Reconstruction era and into the early twentieth century. Rosenwald schools also were intended to be gathering spaces for rural black communities. In addition to using the school grounds for functions, the movable partitions and blackboards made large spaces possible for plays, student socials, civic events, and public meetings.