Gifford Rosenwald School

National Register Listing

Street Address:

6146 Columbia Highway, Gifford, SC (Hampton County)

Alternate Name:

Gifford Colored School

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NRHP Nomination

Record Number:

S10817725015

Description and Narrative:

Originally constructed in 1920, Gifford Rosenwald School faces west, fronting onto Columbia Highway (S.C. 321). The original design did not conform to the stock building plans for two-teacher schools that were available through the Rosenwald Foundation, but the floorplan is quite similar to the two-teacher “Model No. 4” school detailed in the U.S. Bureau of Education’s 1914 publication entitled Rural Schoolhouses and Grounds. Gifford Rosenwald is significant under Criterion A for its association with the history of African American education in Hampton County, South Carolina from 1920 to 1958. It stands both as a reminder to the history of racial segregation in South Carolina’s public schools as well as the creative adaptation and resistance to this segregated public school system by African American citizens. Black South Carolinians worked to secure educational facilities for their children using the resources available to them. Facilities like the Gifford Rosenwald School offer tangible representation of these efforts to resist a separate and unequal school system, where African American children received less funding and were given fewer resources than whites. The Gifford Rosenwald School is being under the National Register multiple documentation form, “The Rosenwald School Building Program in South Carolina, 1917-1932.” Listed in the National Register October 4, 2017.

Period of Significance:

1920 – 1958

Level of Significance:

Local

Area of Significance:

Architecture;Education;Ethnic Heritage: Black

National Register Determination:

listed

Date of Certification:

October 4 2017

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