Rosenwald School is a

Rosenwald school The Rosenwald School project built more than 5,000 schools, shops, and teacher homes in the United States primarily for the education of African-American children in the South during the early 20th century. The project was the product of the partn ...

Arkansas Highway 26 Arkansas Highway 26 (AR 26) is a designation for two state highways in Arkansas. One segment of runs from U.S. Route 371 (US 371) east of Lockesburg east to Highway 51 west of Arkadelphia. A second segment of runs from Inte ...

in Delight,

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...

. The school, a single-story wood-frame structure with a

gable roof A gable roof is a roof consisting of two sections whose upper horizontal edges meet to form its ridge. The most common roof shape in cold or temperate climates, it is constructed of rafters, roof trusses or purlins. The pitch of a gable roof c ...

, was built in 1938 by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

. Philanthropist

Julius Rosenwald Julius Rosenwald (August 12, 1862 – January 6, 1932) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He is best known as a part-owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, and for establishing the Rosenwald Fund, which donated millions i ...

sponsored the Rosenwald schools to provide education for African-Americans in rural communities; the

Julius Rosenwald Fund The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of S ...

helped build 389 schools in Arkansas, including the one in Delight. The school closed in the 1970s, when many of the Rosenwald schools closed due to

desegregation Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation), leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws ...

. It is now used as a local community center. The Rosenwald School was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1990.

References

School buildings completed in 1938 Schools in Pike County, Arkansas Colonial Revival architecture in Arkansas Rosenwald schools in Arkansas School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Arkansas Works Progress Administration in Arkansas National Register of Historic Places in Pike County, Arkansas Former school buildings in the United States Historically segregated African-American schools in Arkansas 1938 establishments in Arkansas Community centers in Arkansas {{PikeCountyAR-NRHP-stub

See also

References