Program

Hometown Heritage®

Subject

Building, Education

Location

611 Griffintown Rd, Woodland, NC 27897, USA

Lat/Long

36.35233873947, -77.251467843374

Grant Recipient

Chowan Discovery Group

Potecasi Graded School, in Northampton County North Carolina, was founded in 1878 at the urging of African American community members from the Second Potecasi Missionary Baptist Church. James “Jim” Langford and his wife Winnie granted their son Brosier and two white people an acre of land, across from the church, to build a school for people of color. Jim was a carpenter and donated lumber and personal labor to build the make-shift school. Potecasi Graded School originally had one teacher, Madison Brewer, who was paid $7 a month. When Brosier died, Second Baptist Church took responsibility for the property.

In 1921, the school requested to receive money from the Rosenwald Fund to build a new facility. The Rosenwald Fund was the product of a partnership between Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropist, owner and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and Booker T. Washington, a prominent civil rights activist and founder of the Tuskegee Institute. They established the Rosenwald Fund in 1917 to support education for black children in the rural American South. The fund provided communities with architectural plans and matching funds to build modern schools and other buildings. The Rosenwald School project ultimately produced over 5,300 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the U.S., including the Potecasi school in 1922.

Contributions from the Rosenwald Fund, black community members, and the county were pooled together to erect the $4,350 school. The schoolhouse was comprised of three classrooms and an auditorium. The school thrived until 1957, when it closed in the wake of desegregation. The Potecasi Community Club purchased the school and opened the Potecasi Community Center at the site in 1959. The club became a hub for community activities and educational training programs. The old schoolhouse fell into disrepair in the 1990s. Finally, in 2010, a former student of Potecasi School, Mary Slade Settle, launched a revitalization project to preserve the building. The building still serves as the Potecasi Community Center today and is one of the only Rosenwald Schools in the county that is still in use.