Echoes of The Sandhills

Series 3 - Echo 5 — Crossroads and Change, 1940–1970

Consolidation, Community Schools, and the Impact of Desegregation in the Sandhills

By the mid-20th century, Black education in the Sandhills stood at a crossroads. The Rosenwald era had delivered durable buildings, trained teachers, and renewed confidence, but new forces were reshaping education across North Carolina. Consolidation replaced one- and two-room schools with centralized campuses. School buses extended the reach of education while quietly dismantling many small community schools. At the same time, African American families continued pressing for expanded secondary education, equal facilities, and fair funding.

The schools that emerged during this period were larger, more centralized, and often deeply symbolic. They represented progress, but they also carried the weight of loss, loss of neighborhood schools, local control, and institutions that had once served as the heart of rural Black life.

Building Regional Black Schools

As counties consolidated their school systems, several key institutions rose to serve broader geographic areas, drawing students from multiple communities and counties.

E. E. Smith High School (Cumberland County)Established in Fayetteville in 1957, E. E. Smith High School became one of the most prominent African American high schools in southeastern North Carolina. Named for educator and administrator E. E. Smith, the school reflected both progress and inequality: it offered expanded academic and extracurricular opportunities while remaining segregated. Students from rural Cumberland County, including former Rosenwald school communities, traveled long distances to attend. E. E. Smith became a source of pride, producing graduates who went on to college, military service, teaching, and civic leadership.

Johnsonville and Shawtown Schools (Harnett County)In Harnett County, communities such as Johnsonville and Shawtown experienced consolidation firsthand. Earlier local schools gave way to centralized facilities that served students from across the county. While these schools provided broader curricula and more stable staffing, families remembered the emotional cost of seeing community-built schools closed or repurposed. Churches once again stepped in, hosting meetings, graduations, and reunions to preserve a sense of continuity.

W. B. Wicker School (Lee County)In Lee County, the transition was anchored by what was originally known as the Lee County Training School, built in 1927 with Rosenwald support in Sanford. Designed to provide secondary education and teacher training for African American students, the school quickly became the educational center of Black life in the county.

In 1954, the school was renamed W. B. Wicker School in honor of William Bartelle Wicker, its first principal and a tireless advocate for Black education. Under his leadership, the school expanded academic offerings and served as the county’s Black high school for decades. Students traveled from rural Lee County communities, forming bonds that lasted long after graduation. W. B. Wicker remained a cornerstone of African American education until desegregation reshaped the school system, after which the building continued to serve the community in new roles.

West Southern Pines School (Moore County)In Moore County, West Southern Pines emerged as a consolidated school serving African American students from Southern Pines and surrounding rural areas. The school reflected the county’s shifting economy and demographics, educating children of domestic workers, laborers, and service employees connected to Pinehurst and the resort economy. West Southern Pines stood as both a beacon of opportunity and a reminder of segregation’s boundaries.

The Impact of Desegregation

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision promised equal education, but change came slowly and unevenly. In the Sandhills, desegregation often meant that Black students were reassigned to formerly white schools, while Black schools, many of them newer and deeply rooted in their communities, were closed, downgraded, or repurposed.

The professional impact of desegregation on African American educators varied by county and implementation. In certain districts, Black principals and teachers continued to lead their schools for extended periods following desegregation, preserving institutional knowledge and stability. Elsewhere, administrative restructuring and school closures resulted in diminished leadership roles or reassignment of experienced educators. Although desegregation expanded student access, it also altered long-standing educational relationships within Black communities.

What Was Gained, What Was Lost

By the early 1970s, Black education in the Sandhills had entered a new era. Access expanded, but ownership diminished. The legacy of earlier schools survived through alumni networks, church records, oral histories, and the physical buildings that still stand today.

The journey from brush arbor to Rosenwald school, from training school to consolidated high school, tells a story not only of education, but of determination, adaptation, and resilience.

The echoes remain in the names remembered, the buildings repurposed, and the generations shaped by teachers who believed that education was the surest path forward.

Looking Ahead — The People Behind the Progress

Schools tell one part of the story.

People tell the rest.

Behind every classroom built, every student taught, and every community sustained were individuals who carried the Sandhills far beyond its borders. Men and women born into bondage who became educators. Pastors who laid both spiritual and institutional foundations. Teachers, ministers, diplomats, and organizers whose influence reached from rural North Carolina to national and international stages.

Some founded churches that doubled as schools. Some established institutions of higher learning. Some carried the voice of Black America across oceans at a time when freedom at home was still contested. Their names do not always appear in textbooks, but their work reshaped communities and opened doors for generations to come.

The next series turns its focus to these lives.

Series 4 - Echoes in Action will spotlight individuals from the Sandhills whose courage, intellect, faith, and service extended the fight for education, dignity, and opportunity locally, nationally, and globally. Their stories remind us that history is not only built in buildings, but carried in people.

Echoes of The Sandhills

Series 3 - Echo 4 - A New Century, A New Momentum, 1900–1940

From Makeshift Classrooms to Rosenwald Schools: Expanding Black Education in the Sandhills

By the turn of the 20th century, Black education in the Sandhills had survived its most fragile years. The brush arbors, church classrooms, cabins, barns, and one-room schools of Reconstruction were never meant to be permanent, but they had done their work. They produced readers, teachers, ministers, farmers, tradespeople, and parents who believed deeply that education was not optional but essential.

As the new century began, Black communities across Lee, Moore, Harnett, and Cumberland counties turned their attention from access to advancement. The question was no longer whether children would be educated, but how far that education could take them.

From Meager Schools to Regional Normal Schools

Early Black schools in the Sandhills were community-built and community-sustained, but they faced serious limitations. Buildings were small and aging, school terms were short, and teachers often lacked formal training. In response, African American leaders championed Normal schools, institutions dedicated to training Black teachers who could return to rural communities better prepared and better equipped.

Howard Grammar School in Fayetteville had already demonstrated the power of this model. Its successor, Howard Normal School (later Fayetteville State University), became a regional anchor, supplying trained teachers to surrounding counties. Graduates spread outward into Lee, Moore, Harnett, and Cumberland counties, strengthening existing schools and raising expectations for what Black education could look like.

Yet even with trained teachers, many rural schools remained housed in buildings that were unsafe, overcrowded, or unsuitable for modern instruction. What communities needed next were better schools and the resources to build them.

The Rosenwald Vision: Partnership, Not Charity

That opportunity arrived through the Julius Rosenwald Fund, established in 1917 by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald in partnership with Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute. The goal of the Rosenwald program was clear and radical for its time:

To improve rural Black education by building durable, well-designed schools through shared investment between Black communities, local governments, and private philanthropy.

Rosenwald schools were never “free.” Communities had to contribute land, labor, and money. Counties had to agree to support teachers and maintenance. The Fund provided architectural plans, oversight, and matching funds, but the schools belonged to the people who built them.

Between 1913 and 1938, more than 5,000 Rosenwald schools, teacher’s homes, and libraries were constructed across the South, including dozens throughout the Sandhills region.

Rosenwald Schools in the Sandhills Region <--click to view

Cumberland County

Cumberland County became one of the most active participants in the Rosenwald program. Rural Black communities petitioned for schools that replaced aging one-room structures with light-filled buildings featuring multiple classrooms, cloakrooms, and industrial spaces. These schools often became community centers, hosting meetings, programs, and adult education classes.

Harnett County

In Harnett County, Rosenwald schools built upon a long tradition of land donations and cooperative building. Families who had once erected brush schools now raised funds, hauled lumber, and provided skilled labor to meet Rosenwald requirements. The result was a network of stronger schools that served children from wide rural areas.

Moore County

Moore County’s Rosenwald schools reflected both agricultural and industrial Black communities. As Pinehurst expanded and rural labor shifted, Rosenwald schools offered stability and places where children could receive consistent instruction despite economic change.

Lee County

After its formation in 1907, Lee County quickly embraced Rosenwald construction as a way to modernize its Black school system. Schools built during this era replaced earlier subscription schools and helped standardize education across the county.

Spotlight: The Manchester Rosenwald School (Cumberland County)

Among Cumberland County’s Rosenwald schools was the Manchester School, built to serve a growing rural Black population northwest of Fayetteville. While official records are limited, surviving correspondence between Professor Charles E. Hunter, the school’s principal, and W. F. Credle, supervisor for the Rosenwald Fund, offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the process.

The letters speak to:

• the difficulty of raising local matching funds

• concerns about construction costs and materials

• enrollment pressures and overcrowding

• the pride the community took in meeting Rosenwald standards

  
  

In one exchange, the principal emphasized not only the need for the building but the community’s determination to sustain it. The school was more than a structure, it was evidence that the community had met every requirement placed before it.

The Manchester School also shared a physical and institutional connection with Bethel A.M.E. Zion Church. Correspondence associated with the school lists its address as P.O. Box 255, Manchester, North Carolina. Today, Bethel A.M.E. Zion Church stands at 255 Vass Road, Spring Lake, North Carolina, on the same site where the school once operated. While rural postal designations changed over time, the shared number reflects continuity of place and purpose. Oral history further indicates that after the school building was destroyed by fire, classes continued in the church, reinforcing Bethel’s long-standing role as both a spiritual and educational center for the Manchester community.

Like many Rosenwald schools, Manchester stood as a symbol of progress: orderly, permanent, and designed for learning. Even where records fall silent, the correspondence confirms what oral history has long held true—this school existed because the people demanded it and worked for it.

The principles behind the Rosenwald program were shaped by a clear-eyed awareness of American hypocrisy. Julius Rosenwald himself acknowledged the contradiction between national ideals and lived reality when he observed:

“We like to look down on the Russians because of the way they treat the Jews, and yet we turn around, and the way we treat our African-Americans is not much better.” ('Schoolhouse': Rosenwald Schools In The South : NPR)

What Rosenwald Schools Changed

Rosenwald schools transformed Black education in the Sandhills by:

• extending school terms

• improving teacher retention

• creating safer, healthier learning environments

• fostering pride and ownership within communities

• linking rural schools to regional and state educational systems

  
  

They did not end inequality. Schools remained segregated and underfunded compared to white schools. But Rosenwald schools marked a turning point—from survival to structure, from improvisation to permanence.

A Bridge to the Future

By 1940, many Rosenwald schools were already shaping second and third generations of students. Children who once learned letters in brush arbors were now grandparents watching their grandchildren attend schools built of brick and timber, with glass windows and blackboards.

The Rosenwald era did not erase the sacrifices of earlier generations, it honored them.

References

• Julius Rosenwald Fund Archives – School construction records and correspondence

• Rosenwald Fund Collection · Rosenwald Fund Collection retrieved from Fisk University

• Tuskegee Institute Records – Rosenwald program administration

• Cumberland County School Board Records, Early 20th Century

• North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Reports, 1900–1940

Coming Next — Echo 5

As Rosenwald schools flourished, new challenges emerged: consolidation, transportation, high schools, and the growing push for equalization. Echo 5 will explore how Black education in the Sandhills navigated the mid-20th century—on the road toward desegregation and beyond.

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.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.