The Sallie Barbour School, Also Called The Wilson Colored Graded School - Wilson County, North Carolina
Narrative and photographs source: Black Wide-Awake, Lisa Y. Henderson.
Top photograph: Wilson Colored Graded School, Wilson, North Carolina: "Photograph of second grade children and teachers in the photo taken on the steps of the Wilson Colored Graded School circa 1920.
This school was later renamed The Sallie Barbour Elementary. Copy courtesy of G.K. Butterfield Jr.
Bottom Photograph: Wilson, North Carolina: "This photograph is the earliest known depicting the Colored Graded School. Photographer F.M. Winstead, who operated in Wilson from about 1880 to about 1908, shot this wintertime scene, most likely within a few years of the school’s opening in the 1890s.
The Sallie Barbour School, also called the Wilson Colored Graded School, was originally built in 1898 and was for children until they were 13 years old. Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, president of the Sears Roebuck & Co. built 5,000 schools for African Americans throughout the rural south.
There were 16 Rosenwald Schools in Wilson County with the Sallie Barbour School being one of them.
The school was built at what was then the edge of town, and I am fairly sure that the field in front of the school has been picked clean of cotton.-My thanks to J. Robert Boykin III for this photograph."
Source: -Wilson County Public Local Library - Researcher Lisa Y. Henderson