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.