Main School, also known as the Suffern Central School District Administration Building, is a historic

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...

building located at Hillburn,

Rockland County, New York Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. It is about from the Bronx at their closest points. The county's population, as of t ...

. It was built in 1912, and is a two-story hollow tile and concrete building covered in

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

and set on a raised basement. The building features

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the archi ...

style design elements and originally housed eight classrooms. In 1943, it was the focus of a prominent

school desegregation School integration in the United States is the process (also known as desegregation) of ending race-based segregation within American public and private schools. Racial segregation in schools existed throughout most of American history and rema ...

battle, following the overturning of New York State's segregation law in 1938. ''Note:'' This includes an
''Accompanying photographs''
/ref> Thurgood-Marshall

In 1943, the attorney

Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-A ...

won a disparity case regarding

integration Integration may refer to: Biology *Multisensory integration *Path integration * Pre-integration complex, viral genetic material used to insert a viral genome into a host genome *DNA integration, by means of site-specific recombinase technology, ...

of the schools of Hillburn, 11 years before his landmark case of ''

Brown v. Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregat ...

''. He represented the village's

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

parents. In 2010, the state legislature designated May 17 as Thurgood Marshall Day in honor of his work in civil rights. Mixed-race children who lived in the town of Ramapo attended the Brook School in Hillburn, a wood structure that did not have a library, indoor bathrooms or gymnasium. The Main School was reserved for white children and included a gymnasium, a library and indoor plumbing. It is now used as the headquarters of the Suffern Central School District. The Rockland African Diaspora Heritage Center in

Pomona, New York Pomona is a village partly in the town of Ramapo and partly in the town of Haverstraw in Rockland County, New York, United States. It is located north of New Hempstead, east of Harriman State Park, north of Monsey and west of Mount Ivy. Acco ...

, has an exhibit of artifacts and photographs loaned by a student who attended the Brook School. The student went on to college, and eventually taught English and history. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2015.

References

External links

Suffern Central School District
School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state) Colonial architecture in New York (state) School buildings completed in 1912 Schools in Rockland County, New York National Register of Historic Places in Rockland County, New York 1912 establishments in New York (state) {{RocklandCountyNY-NRHP-stub

See also

References

External links