During the 1914-1915 academic year, North Carolina received funding for its first Rosenwald schools, although the Rosenwald Fund’s School Building Program did not begin until the nonprofit was incorporated in 1917. Using Tuskegee’s architectural plans for school houses as a model, the Warren Grove School in Chowan County, a two-teacher floorplan, was built for a total cost of $1,622.

The Black community had contributed $486, the White community and the school system furnished $836, and Julius Rosenwald himself had contributed $300, the maximum amount initially allocated for any schoolhouse.⁣ Sears and Roebuck president Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington established the fund to provide grants to African American communities to improve education.
By 1928 one in every five rural schools in the South was a Rosenwald school; the schools housed one-third of the region’s rural Black schoolchildren and teachers.

At the program’s conclusion in 1932, it had produced 4,977 schools, 217 teacher’s homes, and 163 shop buildings that served 663,625 students in 15 states. Financial aid from the Rosenwald Fund often subsidized only fifteen to twenty percent of a building’s total cost.

To cover the balance, monies from local and state education departments, as well as white communities (a requirement of aid from the fund) were used. In North Carolina the fund assisted with 817 projects in ninety-three counties.⁣

Photograph source: N.85.1.1622⁣
From the General Negative Collection, State Archives; Raleigh, NC. ⁣
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Warren Grove NC's First Rosenwald School
By Vernon Fueston / Chowan Herald - Feb 14, 2025


EDENTON — One of North Carolina’s treasures sits just a few miles outside of Edenton, little noticed but not completely forgotten.

The 1915 education building at Warren Grove A.M.E. Church was the first in a series of Rosenwald Schools built in North Carolina during the early 20th century to support the education of Black children in counties that were unable or reluctant to invest tax money in schools for them.

The earliest known school for Black students in Chowan County opened in 1881 at the intersection of Freemason and Peterson streets and featured Evalina Williams Badham as the teacher. Each of Edenton’s four churches where Black residents made up a majority of the congregation also sponsored schools, the first opened by St. John the Evangelist Church in 1882.

Three years later, the Edenton Normal and Industrial School was formed through Kadesh A.M.E. Church, and a third church-sponsored school was opened by Providence Baptist Church. About 75 Black students were enrolled in the church and private school network by 1895.

More than 5,000 shops, schools, and teacher homes were built for the education of African American children through a joint effort by Chicago clothing manufacturer Julius Rosenwald and the Sears, Roebuck and Company he would go on to head as president, and African American leader and Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington. The partnership contributed starter funds that helped local governments and private teachers bring educational opportunities to Black children.

White-run school boards had to agree to maintain the schools once they were built.

The program helped address some of the inequities Blacks lived with in the Jim Crow South where white students received more than five times the educational funding that Black children did. In some states the ratio was as high as 13-1.

Warren Grove School, completed in 1915, was the first Rosenwald School completed in North Carolina, though the Rosenwald School Building Program was not officially incorporated until 1917. The two-teacher school was built using plans drawn by Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and was constructed at a cost of $1,622. The Black community contributed $486, Rosenwald personally contributed $300, and Chowan County put up $836.

Two schools were ordered at the time, the other being the Gum Pond School on Tynch Town Road. The Warren Grove School replaced another structure purchased by the Chowan County Board of Education in 1905. Located across the street from Warren Grove School, it sat on a one-acre tract of land which was purchased from William H. Byrum for $35.