Echoes from the Sandhills
Series 4 - Echoes in Action
Echo 22 - Professor Charles N. Hunter: A Principal Who Demanded Better
Manchester, Cumberland County, North Carolina — 1926
In November 1926, Professor Charles N. Hunter sat down to write a letter to W. F. Credle, director of the Rosenwald Fund in Raleigh, North Carolina. Hunter was the principal of the Manchester School, where a new school building was being prepared for Black children in the Manchester community.
What he had to say was not particularly encouraging.
On November 3, Hunter reported that a truckload of desks and stoves had arrived for the school. Rather than the new furnishings one might expect for a new building, the desks were old, broken, and discarded.
There were 22 desks. None had seats attached. Many lacked book shelves. All were damaged and worn.
Three stoves had also arrived, two large and one small. All were old and broken.
Hunter reported that the school had been instructed to use the old seats from the previous building. Most of those, too, were broken and unsuitable.
And that was not all.
No blackboards had been sent. There were no wood supplies, no toilet facilities, no crayons, no erasers, no water buckets and dippers, and no desks or chairs for the teachers.
Hunter ended his letter with a pointed observation:
"You will see the conditions when you return. Don't let it be known that I have informed you. You can see for yourself."
Those words provide a glimpse into the difficult position of a Black school principal attempting to secure adequate facilities and equipment for his students in the segregated South.
A New School for Manchester
The Manchester School was part of the Rosenwald school-building program, an initiative that helped finance thousands of schools for Black children across the rural South.
The Manchester Rosenwald School was constructed during the 1926–1927 budget year on two acres of land in Cumberland County, in the community now associated with Spring Lake.
The school followed a four-teacher building plan and had a reported construction cost of $4,700.
Funding came from three sources:
Black community contributions: $750
Public funds: $2,850
Rosenwald Fund: $1,100
The contributions of Black residents were particularly significant. Families and community members helped finance a school for children who were educated in a segregated public school system.
The building stood on property associated with Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a congregation with roots reaching back to the nineteenth century.
For the Manchester community, the new school represented an investment in its children's future.
A Principal Who Spoke Up
The surviving correspondence from October through December 1926 shows that Hunter was actively involved in efforts to address problems surrounding the new school.
In letters to Credle, Hunter raised concerns about the building, its furnishings, and the conditions under which teachers and students were expected to work.
His November 3 letter was especially direct. He described what had been delivered, what was broken, and what was missing.
He did not simply say the equipment was inadequate. He provided specifics.
The response from Credle, dated November 6, suggests that Hunter's concerns were justified.
Credle acknowledged that he had been disappointed in the Manchester School and promised to work toward bringing the building up to a reasonable standard.
He also indicated that payment would be withheld until improvements were made and the building was adequately equipped.
For Hunter, however, the immediate concern was not simply construction or payment. It was the condition of the school in which children would learn and teachers would work.
More Than a Building
The Manchester Rosenwald School was more than a structure of wood, windows, desks, and classrooms.
It was a place where Black children in a rural community could receive an education, where teachers worked to prepare young people for their futures, and where families invested in opportunities that had too often been denied or limited.
A newspaper notice published in Fayetteville on May 29, 1935, offers another glimpse into the school's place in the community.
Cumberland County Health Officer Dr. M. T. Foster announced a schedule of vaccination clinics for June. Among the designated locations was Manchester School, identified in the newspaper as a school for Black children.
Vaccinations were scheduled there on Thursdays, June 6, 13, 20, and 27, at 9 a.m.
The notice demonstrates that Manchester School remained an identifiable community institution in 1935, although it does not establish whether the original Rosenwald building was still standing.
At some point, the Manchester Rosenwald School building was destroyed by fire. The date has not yet been established.
Remembering Professor Hunter
Much about Charles N. Hunter remains unknown.
His birthplace, family, education, and years of service at Manchester have not yet been established. Additional research may eventually reveal where he taught before arriving in Manchester and where his career took him afterward.
But the letters he wrote in 1926 preserve something important about him.
He was a principal who recognized that his students and teachers deserved better than broken desks, worn-out stoves, and classrooms without essential supplies.
He documented the deficiencies and brought them to the attention of someone who might be able to help.
Nearly a century later, his words remain a reminder that the history of Black education is not only the history of buildings constructed or money raised. It is also the history of educators who worked to ensure that those buildings could serve the children for whom they were intended.
Professor Charles N. Hunter was one of those educators.
Sources and research notes
North Carolina Division of Negro Education, Rosenwald Fund correspondence, Manchester School, October–December 1926.
Rosenwald school records, Manchester School, Cumberland County, North Carolina, application 36-F, budget year 1926–1927.
Fayetteville, North Carolina, newspaper, May 29, 1935, vaccination clinic schedule announced by Dr. M. T. Foster. Newspaper title to be confirmed.
North Carolina Historic Preservation Office, Manchester School survey record, CD1800.
Research continues into Professor Hunter's life and the date of the school's destruction by fire
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