Echoes of The Sandhills

Series 3 - Echo 3 — Schools of the Sandhills, 1865–1900

Built to Educate, Meant to Empower: Black Schools of the Sandhills

Freedom brought joy, uncertainty, and a fierce determination to learn. Across the Sandhills, newly freed people worked with missionary teachers, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and most importantly, one another to build the first schools for Black children. These schools were often humble, improvised, and far from ideal, but they were sacred spaces where the newly freed stepped into literacy for the very first time.

Among these early efforts, one institution stood out as a regional cornerstone: Howard Grammar School in Fayetteville.

Howard Grammar School — Fayetteville, Cumberland County

Founded shortly after the Civil War, Howard Grammar School carried the name of General Oliver O. Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Bureau and local African American leaders worked together to establish the school, which quickly became one of the most important educational centers for Black children in the region.

Howard Grammar School prepared its students not only in reading and arithmetic but also for advanced study at the later Howard Normal School, today Fayetteville State University. It modelled what education for the freed could be: organized, rigorous, and grounded in faith and determination. Families sacrificed wages, walked long distances, and pooled coins to support the school, proving that education was the first major institution Black communities built for themselves after emancipation.

Early Schools Beyond Fayetteville (1865–1900) Cumberland County (Outside Fayetteville)

In rural parts of Cumberland County, small community schools sprouted where freed families lived and worked. Early schools met in:

• simple church sanctuaries

• cabins loaned by local families

• repurposed outbuildings

• newly raised one-room schoolhouses

  
  

Missionary teachers occasionally visited these communities, but most teaching was done by local men and women who had gained literacy before or shortly after the war.

Harnett County

Harnett County, still sparsely populated after the Civil War, saw its early schools grow directly from the efforts of African American farmers, turpentine workers, and laborers.

During the 1860s and 1870s, education took place wherever a space could be secured:

• church buildings during the week

• barns and sheds cleared in the mornings

• brush arbor schools under shade trees

• log schoolhouses built cooperatively by neighbors

By the 1880s, subscription schools, small schools funded by families who pooled money to hire a teacher, had become common. They often stood on land donated by African American families determined that their children would read and write even if no county funding existed.

Moore County

Moore County’s freed communities embraced learning with the same urgency. Missionaries from the American Missionary Association sent teachers into communities near Carthage, Deep River, and the Pinehurst area (before it became a resort town). Local Black farmers and craftspeople collaborated to build early schools, some of logs, others outfitted in church buildings.

By the late 1800s, Moore County had several small district schools for Black children funded through:

• local taxes

• community fundraising

• seasonal contributions from farm laborers

  
  

These small institutions would eventually feed into the larger Black schools established in the early 20th century.

The Area That Became Lee County (Before 1907)

Before Lee County existed, the land belonged to Moore and Chatham counties. In these communities, around Jonesboro, Sanford Depot, and the Deep River industrial area, early Black schools appeared almost immediately after emancipation.

Lessons were held in:

• log buildings

• barns

• cabins

• outdoor classrooms

• one-room schoolhouses built by hand

  
  

Teachers often rotated among settlements, teaching in one area for a season and moving to another when families could raise enough funds to support them. Adults attended night classes, learning alongside their children.

A Family Legacy: School #21 Colored - Built on Donated Land (1890)

Not all school stories appear in official records; many survive through family memory.

In 1890, the Brinkley family donated land in Harnett County so that a school could be built. Down a dirt road that remains dirt today—currently called Wilson Drive—a simple, one-room structure arose, built by hand and kept running by the local community. According to oral history, the school was called Mount Carmel, and it stood for decades: aged, sturdy, and undoubtedly full of stories.

Site of School #21 - On Wilson Drive

When it was no longer used for a school, it became a home and was eventually abandoned, a place where local children played “house.” In the early 1970s, a fire that began at Johnsonville School spread through the area and destroyed it. Though the building is gone, its legacy lives on in the generations it educated and in the witness it bears to the determination of the people who built it.

Schools like Mount Carmel, raised on donated land, constructed with hand tools, and swept clean each morning for lessons, were the quiet engines of freedom.

Stay Tuned for Echo 4 — A New Century, A New Momentum

As the 19th century ended, the Sandhills stood on the threshold of transformation. The brush schools, barns, repurposed cabins, and handmade one-room schoolhouses of the Reconstruction era created a foundation—but they were only the beginning.

The early 1900s ushered in a new phase of Black education marked by:

• the rise of formal county school systems

• stronger and more permanent school buildings

• the growth of teacher training institutions

• increased support from northern philanthropists

• early developments that would pave the way for Rosenwald-era partnerships

  
  

Echo 4 will explore this dynamic era, from 1900 to 1940, when communities expanded their educational vision, strengthened their institutions, and built the schools that shaped generations.

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References

• Freedmen’s Bureau Records, 1865–1870 – Reporting on day schools and teachers in the Fayetteville Subdistrict and rural Sandhills communities.

• American Missionary Association (AMA), Annual Reports, 1866–1880 – Documenting missionary teachers serving Moore and Cumberland Counties.

• Cumberland County Educational Records, Late 19th Century – Notes on Howard Grammar School and the development of formal Black schools.

• North Carolina State Superintendent Reports, 1870s–1890s – Descriptions of subscription schools, county-supported Black schools, and rural education challenges.

• Sandhills Oral Histories – Family and community accounts of one-room schools, brush arbor classrooms, and land donations for educational use.

Echoes of The Sandhills

Series 3 - Echo 2 — Sanctuaries of Learning: The Church as the First Schoolhouse

When freedom finally came, it did not arrive with schools, books, or trained teachers. For newly freed people, education began in fragments, a few lessons here, a borrowed book there, and instruction as uncertain as the freedom itself. What learning existed often depended not on institutions, but on fragile, short-lived individual efforts.

One such story appears in the slave narrative of James Turner McLean, who tells of a man named Isaac Brantley of Anderson Creek, an early would-be teacher whose efforts were brief and limited. Brantley would read aloud, and the students would repeat after him. That, McLean said, was the extent of the instruction. Brantley did not remain long, and little learning came from his presence.

McLean’s account does not describe a success story. It describes a beginning, uneven, uncertain, and incomplete. His words remind us that early education after emancipation was not immediate, organized, or reliable. Freedom had come, but schools had not.

And yet the hunger to learn was unmistakable.

A newspaper of the period, The Journal of Freedom – 1865, offered its own sharp observation:

              “The Freedman has got a disease for learning. It is a mania with him.”

What the writer dismissed as a “mania” was in truth determination, a people anxious to read the Bible for themselves, to write their own names, and to understand a world that had long denied them knowledge. Learning happened wherever it could, however it could by firelight, in fields, on porches, under trees, and in borrowed spaces.

Opening Bridge: From Reconstruction to Revival

As we move from the broader landscape of early education during and after the Civil War into the lived experience of local communities, one truth becomes clear: when no formal institutions stepped forward to educate newly freed people, the church did.

Across the Sandhills, and throughout the South, Black congregations rose to meet an urgent need. Sanctuaries became schoolhouses, pulpits became lecterns, and faith became fuel for educational progress. What began as spiritual refuge quickly expanded into intellectual refuge, creating the first sustained system of Black education in the region.

Brush Arbors, Praise Houses, and Makeshift Classrooms

Before schoolhouses stood along country roads, there were brush arbors, simple structures of limbs, longleaf pine branches, and faith, built by hand. Praise houses and frame churches served as classrooms during the week and sanctuaries on Sunday.

Here, in these humble spaces:

• children and adults learned side-by-side,

• scripture doubled as the first reading text,

• and the ability to read became intertwined with spiritual identity and civic empowerment.

Teachers were often those who could read the Bible, a pastor, a literate congregant, or a missionary passing through. In rural communities stretching from Aberdeen to Raeford to the deep pine regions of Cumberland and Richmond Counties, learning happened wherever a congregation could gather safely.

Pastors as Educators, Organizers, and Activists

In many Sandhills communities, the pastor was not only the spiritual shepherd but the educational architect. The pulpit became a platform for literacy as much as for worship.

Pastors:

• taught classes,

• traveled to neighboring towns to recruit teachers,

• organized meetings to raise money for books and supplies,

• and advocated before Freedmen’s Bureau agents and local officials on behalf of their schools.

  
  

They understood that literacy was more than education, it was protection, dignity, and a pathway to self-sufficiency in a world still hostile to Black advancement.

The Church as the First “School Board”

Long before state-supported Black schools emerged, churches functioned as the first educational governing bodies. Congregations decided:

• where the school would be held,

• who would teach,

• how funds would be raised,

• and how to maintain a safe learning environment.

Women’s groups, missionary circles, and mothers’ boards were instrumental in this work. They baked, sold, organized, and gave sacrificially so that children could learn. Across rural congregations throughout the Sandhills, church members cleared land, cut timber, and built early school structures with their own hands.

Denominational Leadership and Local Action

Beyond local initiative, entire denominations mobilized to support Black education.  As reported in The Educator newspaper, a powerful example came from the General Conference of the A.M.E. Zion Church held in Charlotte in June 1872, where the Connection formally committed itself to founding schools for Black children across North Carolina and specifically in Fayetteville. This denomination-wide charge set a clear, organized direction during Reconstruction.

Their efforts reflected a broader regional movement: Black congregations stepping forward, coordinated and purposeful, to build educational opportunity where none had existed.

Local churches in the Sandhills, inspired by these denominational directives, ensured that education remained spiritually grounded, community-centered, and aligned with the practical needs of newly freed families.

Sunday School as the First Literacy Program

Sunday School, originally created for scripture study, became the earliest structured literacy program for many Black communities. With limited access to textbooks, the Bible became the foundational reader.

Across the Sandhills:

• adults learned to read in Sunday School for the first time,

• children practiced letters and penmanship on scraps of paper,

• and spiritual lessons merged with reading skills, moral formation, and civic literacy.

For communities long denied education, Sunday School was a revolutionary act, a doorway into understanding, self-expression, and participation in society.

Legacy: From Sanctuaries to Schoolhouses

The seeds planted in these early church classrooms grew into some of the first formal Black schools across the Sandhills. The A.M.E. Zion Church’s 1872 educational mandate, echoed in local action such as the 1875 Fayetteville initiative, demonstrates how congregations led the way in transforming worship spaces into structured centers of learning.

By the early 20th century, these same churches helped establish community schools, teacher training programs, and ultimately partnered in the creation of Rosenwald Schools, many of which still stand as testaments to faith-driven determination. The church provided more than a building; it provided the vision, strategy, and resolve to build educational systems where none existed.

Closing Reflection

From brush arbors to sanctuaries, from denominational mandates to local schoolhouses, the church stood at the center of Black educational advancement. When newly freed communities needed hope, structure, and opportunity, congregations answered with courage and conviction. In these sacred spaces, generations discovered that knowledge strengthens faith, anchors identity, and opens the door to the future.

Teaser for Echo 3 — “From Church Schools to Community Schools: Building a System of Black Education”

In Echo 3, we’ll follow the journey from church-based classrooms to the rise of community-built and community-led schools across the Sandhills. We’ll explore the development of early schoolhouses, the emergence of Black educators, and the partnerships, sacrifices, and local triumphs that shaped education into the 20th century.

Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving. 

Slave Narratives reference: Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, Vol. 11, North Carolina, Part 2, Jackson-Yellerday | Library of Congress

Echoes From the Sandhills

Series 3 — Built to Educate, Meant to Empower

Echo 1: The Early State of Education in North Carolina

Welcome to Series 3 — Built to Educate, Meant to Empower: Black Schools of the Sandhills.

Echo 1 of this series explores the landscape of education in North Carolina around the time of the Civil War. Understanding the broader state of education during this period provides essential context for recognizing the challenges and triumphs of newly freed African Americans as they pursued learning and opportunity.

Prior to emancipation, education in North Carolina was widely recognized—even by its own press—as weak and neglected. Newspapers such as the Raleigh Star and the Raleigh Register frequently criticized the state’s lack of educational progress in the decades leading up to 1860. Editorials pointed to the scarcity of public schools, the uneven quality of instruction, high illiteracy rates, and a legislature slow to act on meaningful reform. Writers lamented that many children grew up without consistent access to schooling and warned that public indifference was causing North Carolina to fall behind neighboring states. These papers urged lawmakers to establish reliable funding for public education and cautioned that the state’s reputation for “educational backwardness” would persist without decisive action.

With emancipation came new tensions and competing visions for the education of freed people. Local African American communities and many northern missionary teachers pushed for full literacy, academic learning, and civic preparation; education that would equip newly freed individuals to participate fully in society. At the same time, others, including some white southern women and certain philanthropic or industrial educators, promoted vocational or industrial training as the primary educational pathway. Missionary reports and teacher correspondence from the 1860s through the 1890s reveal deep ambivalence and heated debate over how much academic instruction Black students should receive. These conflicting ideologies shaped the early educational landscape that freedpeople had to navigate.

Echo 1 Summary

Before emancipation, North Carolina’s education system was underdeveloped, underfunded, and widely criticized by its own newspapers for its poor literacy rates, lack of schools, and slow legislative action. After emancipation, newly freed African Americans faced competing educational agendas: one that sought full academic and civic education, and another that restricted learning to narrowly defined vocational training. These early debates set the stage for the formation of Black schools throughout the Sandhills.

Preview of Echo 2

As we move into Echo 2, we’ll explore one of the most powerful forces shaping early Black education after emancipation: the church. From brush arbors to sanctuaries transformed into classrooms, Black congregations became the heart of learning, leadership, and liberation. Discover how faith communities built not only schools—but hope, dignity, and opportunity for generations to come.