Maudy Adkinson Johnson remembers walking across cow fields and busy roads as a child to get to her one-room schoolhouse in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
It was the 1950s, and Johnson said the Lee-Buckner School was teaching her how to read, write and do math problems. She was also making friends with other Black children.
Never once did she question why there were no White students at her school – instead, she said students were more focused on their education and building a sense of community.
“We never even talked about it being a difference in the races,” Johnson said. “We didn’t understand it.”
But whether the students knew it or not, Lee-Buckner was part of the Rosenwald Schools project — a broad effort to educate Black children in the rural South at a time when segregation prohibited them from attending White schools.
Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropist and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, launched the project in partnership with Black American orator and president of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington.
Rosenwald, his nonprofit, The Rosenwald Fund, and members of the Black community raised funding for the construction of more than 5,000 schools, teacher homes and shops between 1912 and 1932, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
You can read more in an article on CNN by Nicquel Terry Ellis at: https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/01/us/rosnewald-schools-legacy-preservation-reaj