Still standing: The legacy and history of an Oklahoma Rosenwald school

Oklahoma history and the history of Black Americans has been inextricably linked by a number of events throughout time, from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre to the start of the sit-in movement by civil rights icon Clara Luper. In fact, at one point the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. even visited Oklahoma City, applying for a preaching job at Calvary Baptist Church in Deep Deuce.

And in a small rural town about an hour southeast of Oklahoma City, one of the 13 surviving historically Black towns, stands another prominent piece of Oklahoman and American history.

The building — Rosenwald Hall — built the same year as the race massacre that took place 100 miles northeast, was one of numerous investments in Black communities across America, in partnership between Booker T. Washington, a Black educator and leader of the Tuskegee Institute, and Julius Rosenwald, a Jewish American businessman and philanthropist.

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A brief history of Lima, Oklahoma

Lima, Oklahoma, in Seminole County, has a population of just 66, according to the 2020 census. The town was founded on Seminole Freedmen territory, said Lima Vice Mayor Vashawnda Carter, a sixth-generation resident and member of one of the town's founding families.

Seminole Freedmen were those once held as slaves by tribal leaders, escaped slaves from the Southern United States and free Black men and women. These men and women were often of both mixed Black and Indigenous ancestry, but in the early 20th century, were excluded from the Dawes Rolls. Unlike Cherokee Freedmen, Seminole Freedmen have not been recognized and granted full rights to apply for tribal citizenship.

According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, Lima was named for local limestone quarries and likely existed before 1904. Records of the post office extend from 1907 to 1957. Records of the names of all 28 families who originally established the town of Lima remain.

In the heart of the town of Lima sits a lone brick schoolhouse, one of the last of its kind remaining in the state and country.

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Living history in Lima

Built in 1921, Rosenwald Hall served as the town's elementary school for 45 years, providing education through the eighth grade. The residents of Lima were forced to file suit — Moore et al. v. Porterfield et al. — against the white superintendent and several families who attempted to change the structure of the school district in the mid 1920s. The case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, which upheld a lower court decision that the white school would legally be recognized as the racially separate school because the Black school had been established since statehood and Black families made up the majority of the population in the district — 103 families, versus seven white families.

Students eventually were integrated with nearby New Lima schools in the late 1960s, and Rosenwald Hall was used for the town's Head Start program for several decades before being used as a community center, Carter said.

“I would say the early 2000s, maybe 2005 is when the building became unusable,” Carter said.

The school is featured in a coffee table book by photographer Andrew Feiler, "A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America," which also inspired a photography exhibit displayed at the National Civil Rights Museum, National Center for Civil and Human Rights, the Tennessee State Museum and viewable digitally through Google Arts & Culture.

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Rosenwald schools and their impact on Oklahoma and America

Rosenwald and Washington partnered to bring education to emancipated Black Americans facing the realities of segregation in Jim Crow-era America through the Rosenwald Fund. Washington and Rosenwald's partnership was built on the idea of providing partial funding to towns for schools, but requiring investment from the communities, as well.

"These communities would contribute equivalent amounts to demonstrate their support for the school in the form of cash, land, materials and sweat equity," writes Jeanne Cyriaque, an African American heritage specialist, preservationist and historic school expert in "A Better Life for Their Children."

From 1917 to 1932, more than 5,000 schools, homes for teachers and shops were built predominantly across the rural American South. Schools ranged from modest one-teacher operations to those equipped for 22 teachers.

In Oklahoma, the effort was responsible for helping to establish nearly 200 properties, including 176 schoolhouses, 16 teacher's homes and six shops. At least 11 of Oklahoma's more than 50 all-Black towns built Rosenwald schools beginning in 1920, when the state was bought into the program.

The Rosenwald Fund eventually would build schools and grant fellowships that would impact and educate leaders from Tuskegee Airmen to John Lewis and members of the Little Rock Nine to the likes of Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Maya Angelou, among others.

The schools provided the first true opportunity and access to education after the 1896 "separate but equal" Plessy v. Ferguson ruling at a time when many Black communities had no schools at all, segregated or otherwise.

"I was curious. I was hungry to learn. I was absolutely committed to giving my all in the classroom," Congressman John Lewis said in the foreword to "A Better Life for Their Children." "And I knew ever more clearly that education was the way out and the way up."

Students of Rosenwald schools were afforded a new mobility. Many would finish high school and go on to attend colleges and universities. Generations would return to the schools that made them, becoming teachers and principals for future students.

"The opportunities that are for ourselves and for our children are quite different from back in the 1900s. Without that school being there, the minorities, the Natives and the Blacks, wouldn’t even have had the opportunity to have education,” Carter said.

The efforts to restore Rosenwald Hall

Rosenwald Hall was a four-teacher school and differed from other Rosenwald schools because of its brick and granite construction. Today, Rosenwald Hall is one of the last known remaining Rosenwald schools in Oklahoma, the only one in one of Oklahoma's all-Black towns, and one of only about 500 remaining nationwide.

“There is a need for $1.5 million to have it restored historically,” Carter said. “We are requesting funding, and we're also trying to receive grants. We have talked to different engineers on what is needed to be done.”

Carter, whose father attended the school as part of the last class before integration, has been working alongside others for the last several years to raise money to renovate Rosenwald Hall.

Rosenwald Hall, along with many other Rosenwald schools, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. According to the National Parks Service, "the National Trust for Historic Preservation considers Rosenwald Schools to be a 'National Treasure,'" which has led to an increased emphasis on saving and maintaining the buildings that remain.

“We're just trying to do everything within our means to reach our goal of completing the Rosenwald building," Carter said. "But I feel like if this is demoed or destroyed, that opportunity will also be demoed and destroyed, and a piece of American and Native history and African American history will be lost forever."

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: What to know about the history of Rosenwald Hall in Lima, Oklahoma