Hope Rosenwald School
National Register Listing
Street Address:
1971 Hope Station Road, Pomaria, SC (Newberry County)
Alternate Name:
Hope School; Hope School Community Center; Jackson Community Center
NRHP Nomination
Record Number:
S10817736031
Description and Narrative:
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.
Period of Significance:
1925 – 1954;1926;1954
Level of Significance:
Local
Area of Significance:
Education;Architecture
National Register Determination:
listed
Date of Certification:
October 3 2007
