Coming March 21: A Guided Tour of the Anderson Rosenwald School

Mars Hill’s United Methodist Women are sponsoring a tour of a local historic landmark on March 21 at 1 pm.

Wila Wyatt will provide a guided tour of the newly renovated historically black Anderson Rosenwald School in the Long Ridge Community of Mars Hill, N.C.

Our church community is welcome and encouraged to take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn more about Madison County’s rich history.

Join the March 21 Tour at 1 pm.

Carpooling will be available. Please meet at Mars Hill United Methodist Church at 12:45 pm.

History of the Anderson Rosenwald School

In the 1920s, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co, created a fund to build schools in the rural areas of 15 southern states to enable black children to get an education during segregation. The schools were financed with matching grants from the Rosenwald fund, local governments and the local black communities. The Rosenwald School building program is recognized as one of the most important partnerships to advance African-American education in the early 20th century. The program gave African-Americans unprecedented access to education and a stronger sense of community pride in the segregated South. By 1928 one in every five rural schools for black students in the South was a Rosenwald school, and these schools housed one-third of the region’s rural black schoolchildren and teachers.

The Anderson Rosenwald school in the then black Long Ridge section of Mars Hill was one of the more than 5,300 state-of-the-art school buildings and teachers’ buildings constructed throughout the south with around 813 built in North Carolina. There were more built in North Carolina than in any other state and the Anderson School is one of the few remaining in the mountains of Western North Carolina. This school was built in 1930 and named for Joseph Anderson, a Mars Hill slave who was taken to jail as collateral security for a Mars Hill College debt in the 1850′s. Many of the people in the Long Ridge community trace their ancestry back to Anderson. For people in the Long Ridge Community, the symbol is more personal. It was their school, representing not just education, but through it, a doorway to equality for their children. And, for the whole community of Mars Hill it stands as a reminder of the struggle for equal rights.

Providing education for students through eighth grade, more than 2,000 African-American children attended the Anderson School during the years it operated, ending with 1964, when the school was closed as a result of integration. During that time, there were some famous visitors, one of whom was automobile tycoon Henry Ford. Teachers and students told Ford they had no room for arts and crafts, so Ford later funded an art room behind the school.

The School was abandoned in the 1960s and a community effort was successful in restoring the old school. The school represents the initiative that provided quality buildings and reliable access to public education for African Americans in the South.

It is now listed on the national registry of historic places.

History adapted from https://visitmadisoncounty.com/anderson-rosenwald-school/