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Newell Rosenwald School History...

Thank you to University City Partners: University City History Tour for this information:

Our Country Schools...​

Historians say there were few schools here for rural blacks or whites until the early 20th century. One 1920s school for white children sits on the grounds of the Mallard Creek Barbecue, on Mallard Creek Road. Black children also started going to school after the end of slavery. A schoolhouse for black children survives off of Old Concord Road in the Newell community near UNC Charlotte.

The Newell Rosenwald School is one of more than 5,000 Rosenwald schools for blacks built across the South in the 1920s and ‘30s. Mecklenburg County alone had 24, built through an amazing program created by the president of Sears, Julius Rosenwald. Rosenwald wanted to help educate Southern blacks but felt that both blacks and whites had to support schools for them to succeed.

So Rosenwald offered to provide school plans and some funding, provided that black communities raised money and donated labor, and neighboring white communities agreed to provide operating funds for teachers, books and supplies. Most of Mecklenburg’s Rosenwald schools ceased operation by the 1950s; the Newell schoolhouse is among the few still standing. 

You can’t enter, but you can walk the grounds and imagine when children’s voices filled the air. Be sure to also visit the adjacent cemetery at Torrence Grove A.M.E. Zion Church. One marker remembers a woman who was born a slave and died during the civil-rights revolution. Her great-grandchildren probably learned to read and write at Newell Rosenwald School.

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