When Black Communities Built Their Own Schools

Black parents demanded schools that protected their children. In 1834 Rochester, New York, 32 Black residents petitioned for a separate school after their children faced racial harassment — pushing for education while refusing to accept the conditions they were forced to endure. A year later in Lockport, New York, Black residents set out to raise $150 through subscriptions to build something that would serve as both school and place of worship.

During the Civil War, Martha Culling, a formerly enslaved woman, opened a school on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, that served 120 students a day; by 1863 six schools there were serving more than 1,200 children and adults. After 1866 in Sharpsburg, Maryland, the Black community used Tolson's Chapel as a classroom for children and adults, with local Black teachers eventually taking over from Freedmen's Bureau appointees and keeping it running as a school until 1899.

In 1913, Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald teamed up to build six schools in rural Alabama. As the program grew, Black communities raised the money to keep building — by the early 1930s, the partnership had supported roughly 5,000 schoolhouses across 15 states. Researchers estimate these schools drove nearly 40% of the narrowing of the Black–white education gap for Southern students born between 1910 and 1925.