Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Institute and Julius Rosenwald, philanthropist and president of Sears Roebuck, built state-of-the art schools for African- American children across the South. The effort has been called the most important initiative to advance black education in the early 20th century.
Attending a Rosenwald School put a student at the vanguard of education for southern African-American children. The architecture of the schools was a tangible statement of the equality of all children, and their programming made them a focal point of community identity and aspirations.
By 1928, one-third of the South’s rural black school children and teachers were served by Rosenwald Schools.
https://savingplaces.org/places/rosenwald-schools
According to the holdings at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, the Rosenwald Fund helped build five schools in Walton County:
-
- Black Branch, 1 teacher, built in 1922;
-
- Bruce Creek, 2 teachers, built in 1928, served Argyle south to Red Bay and Seven Runs east to Holmes County;
-
- DeFuniak Springs, discussed below,
-
- Mt. Zion, 2 teachers, built in 1928 in the Paxton/New Harmony area, and
-
- St. Johns, 1 teacher, built in 1928.
This map from the Baker Block Museum shows the approximate location of Walton County schools in 1936, including the Rosenwald schools.
The 6-teacher type building constructed at DeFuniak Springs in 1923, which was later known as Tivoli, has been demolished. According to the late Annie Ruth Campbell:
Prior to the location of the school [Tivoli] at Thomas Avenue and Park Street, classes were held in a house built by Ike McKinnon and Columbus Gipson. McKinnon donated land, materials and labor for the Nelson Avenue structure. . . . The four room school [on Park Street], built by the local school board, was later expanded by the addition of two more rooms. During several subsequent administrations, as black schools throughout the county were phased out, five brick buildings were erected on the site.
The original Tivoli building on Nelson Avenue (not the current location) that Annie Ruth Campbell mentioned may have looked like this:
A typical four-teacher, wood-frame Rosenwald school, such as the second Tivoli building on Park Street, would have looked like this:
If the exact location of these early schools is known, please let me know.