Arvest presents grant to launch restoration of school with ties to George Washington Carver

John Hacker, The Joplin Globe, Mo.
·4 min read

Jul. 15—NEOSHO, Mo. — It's something most children and parents take for granted today, but for a Black child in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, just getting the chance to go to school was a fight.

For scientist and humanitarian George Washington Carver, that struggle began in 1874 in a tiny wood-framed home-turned-school at 639 Young St. in Neosho.

That's when 10-year-old Carver walked from his home near Diamond about 10 miles to Neosho to begin his education at what was then called the Neosho Colored School.

About 150 years later, that old schoolhouse is on the verge of a complete renovation, perhaps in the next 15 to 18 months.

Lana Henry, president of the Carver Birthplace Association, said a $10,000 grant from the Arvest Foundation announced Friday was exactly the amount of money the association needed to make up matching funds that will unlock grants to pay the estimated $350,000 needed to renovate the interior of the school.

"We are beyond thrilled for the grant from the Arvest Foundation," Henry said. "We have made progress in preserving the cultural resource since 2005 when our local Arvest branch donated the property to CBA. And now, thanks to Arvest's ongoing support, we are ready to complete the interior rehabilitation."

Henry said she hopes that by the fall of 2025, the Carver Birthplace Association will be ready to hold a ribbon-cutting on a schoolhouse restored to its 1874 look inside and out, and that it will be ready to tell the story of Carver's struggle to get the education that he believed was a key to freedom and a ticket out of poverty.

"It's actually a quite sizable project to get this turned around with the historical consultants and all that's required," Henry said. "The dollar figure is pretty high to get this done, and we had to have some matching funds and pro bono work added to the federal and state grants that we received. We received a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. We received a grant from Missouri Department of Natural Resources, their Historic Preservation Fund, and a third grant from the African American Civil Rights grant program, and that's administered by the National Park Service.

"But those funds required that we, as a nonprofit, have matching cash and matching assistance. So we've been fundraising. And what is so exciting about this is that this $10,000 that was donated puts us over the top as far as the matching funds we needed," she said.

Terra Oxendine, Arvest vice president for commercial bankers, said Arvest is pleased it can play a role in finishing the job that was started when a Neosho branch of Arvest Bank donated the home and land to the Carver Birthplace Association in 2004.

"The amount of money we donated was exactly what they needed in order to have their matching grants that they needed in order to finish the interior," Oxendine said. "It's a pretty cool thing; we're really excited to be able to do it. Lana does a lot in the community and a lot for our community, so whenever she's involved in something, I trust that it's definitely going to be taken care of."

Henry said that when Arvest first donated the property to the Carver Birthplace Association, the group thought it would have to tear down the house and build a replica, but a survey by a National Park Service architect determined the house was the original school buried under siding and later additions.

"It's a rare find that we could find something in such great shape really, that 70 to 75% of the original fabric is there and it will be restored," Henry said. "You're in a place that particularly is significant because George Washington Carver attended here, and that's how we were able to attain that National Register (of Historic Places) nomination and acceptance there, but many Black Americans came through here. It was a school from 1872 to 1891. Many freed slaves and their families were just seeking to be able to thrive and they needed education to do that. We'll be learning about their lives, about those teachers' lives, about the journey prior, what got them to this place. And we hope that just generations to come will be able to learn from our past and be even better citizens for the future."