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What was once a buoy of promise and progress for Madison County's Black community, only to fall into disrepair, is again a point of pride — and should go on to be for decades to come up.
Thirteen years after the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School'south fate was in jeopardy, individuals committed to its preservation take completed an extensive round of repairs and are poised to reinvent the infinite as an interpretive museum and cultural customs arts center. But first: a yearlong celebration with newfound, like-minded partners dedicated to sustaining the history of preintegration Blackness education — and encouraging future generations to larn from the by and help support a more than equitable future for everyone.
Path to preservation
Originally called the Mars Loma School, the structure was congenital in 1928 at 225 Mount Olive Drive in the Long Ridge customs and served as the educational home for local Black youths and those bused in from Marshall, about eleven miles away. Half of the money for its construction came from the Rosenwald Fund, the brainchild of Sears, Roebuck & Co. executive Julius Rosenwald and slave-turned-educator Booker T. Washington. The latter'south delivery to instruction for Black Americans equally a means of overcoming inequality inspired his philanthropist friend to fund nearly 6,000 Rosenwald schools across the South, including more than than 800 in North Carolina. But it took decades for his contributions to receive widespread attention.
"It was one of the top 5 tenets of the Jewish faith that if a benefactor wanted to give something, they could non claim credit for information technology," says local historian Richard Dillingham. "Then the Rosenwald name does non ever appear."
In 1959, the school was renamed in honor of Joseph Anderson, a slave and talented brickmaker who was held as collateral in 1859 when Mars Loma College was unable to pay a debt. One time emancipated, Anderson became a noted proponent of instruction for the local Blackness community — whose members raised the other one-half of the funds to build the schoolhouse, not knowing for certain if the Rosenwald support would exist approved.
After integration, the building was used as a recreation center in the 1970s and a tobacco air-curing barn in the '80s. It and then sat abased, deteriorating with each year and collecting litter from trespassers, until a neighbor contacted the Madison County Board of Education in 2003, requesting the school's demolition in gild to expand a road from his holding that passed by it. The board turned downward this request and the edifice survived, but it wasn't until fall 2009 that individuals who would become on to officially form the Friends of the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School convened.
Friends indeed
"The first big meeting was in March 2010 when a group of folks came together to try to decide, 'Is this building salvageable and what tin can exist done?'" says Willa Wyatt, chair of the Friends. "Nosotros first started meeting once a quarter, and and so the group decided if we didn't start meeting more than regularly, we would lose continuity of what was being said, washed and planned for."
The Friends had substantial piece of work alee, namely all-encompassing repairs to the dilapidated structure, such as mending a roof that had caved in and was missing at several points. Merely architect Scott Donald saw a path to save the schoolhouse and provided drawings for its rehabilitation that were in line with historic preservation standards so that the building could qualify for the National Register of Historic Places.
"Scott said information technology could exist done, only it's going to be a lengthy and time-consuming and expensive proposition," Wyatt says. "He developed a 5-phase rehabilitation plan. We don't do anything actually in gild here, but nosotros've gone back and checked [everything] off. We might have done something from phase one, and so phase 5 and and so phase three, but it's finished. We did it as nosotros had money or as we had volunteer labor to come up in and do it."
Through grant writing and calls for donations, Willa's hubby,David Wyatt, raised over $240,000 for the work, and handymanDan Slagle was brought on to spearhead the rehabilitation efforts. A small section of forest on the ceiling wound upward being the only pieces of the building that were salvageable, and that lumber now lives on a wall to the left of the entrance. The remains of an sometime piano were likewise rescued — and just in time. In the wall just behind it, honeybees had fabricated a domicile as belatedly as 2009.
Otherwise, everything is new, yet congenital to those historical specifications — downwards to the types of screws. Those regulations proved difficult for modern-day carpenters, who had to restart several aspects of the project. Yet additional pieces of the puzzle proved even more arduous.
"The window wall was completely gone and ane end was 3 inches lower than the other, and so we had to get the building on level basis for a lot of this to work out," Slagle says. "That was probably the most challenging function."
The school attained National Register status in 2018, and with the repair work washed, the Friends are waiting on a building inspector to determine the occupancy number and so issue the certificate of occupancy for the school. Once the space is officially approved, the public tin feel a place that brings so much joy to the Friends, particularly school alumni Sarah Roland Weston Hart and Oralene Anderson Graves Simmons.
"I love this spot because I have and then many memories from hither," Hart says. "To know where information technology was and to see how far it's come up, I'm simply elated every time I come in."
Sustaining momentum
As History Committee chair, Dillingham has worked with Hart and Simmons to research the school's storied past and compile the information in 1 place. After existing as a work-in-progress on the Friends' website since 2019, the official edition of the school'southward history, Our Story, This Place, will be published in August, featuring x-12 more documents.
"In add-on to completing the history book, the Friends are working on curriculum development with the Madison County Schools' Curriculum Leadership Squad, the Mars Colina University's Education Department and the [N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources] African American Heritage Commission," Willa Wyatt says. "We're as well in the initial discussion stage for developing docent training, and our greatest challenge at this time is to find historically correct classroom furnishings."
Other Friends' efforts include designing wayfinding signage, planning for an on-site kiosk, writing and submitting an application for a civil rights mark, securing boosted belongings for parking and filling the school's display case at the Interstate 26 West Welcome Heart. And equally shortly every bit weather permits, piece of work will brainstorm on the grounds surrounding the school.
Farther helping to spread the word is Fatimah' Rashida Shabazz, chair of the Alumni Outreach Commission, whose mother, Mary Wilson, taught at the schoolhouse for 14 years.
"I of my goals is to locate the descendants of the people that attended the school," Shabazz says. "Nosotros have created a newsletter specifically for the alumni so that they can exist enlightened of what's going on with their school edifice. Even though it belongs to the Madison County Board of Ed, it's not the Board of Ed, whose history information technology is. It's the alumni, and to me, that'south the most valuable function of the whole matter — the people."
Electric current key allies in that mission include Superintendent Ronald Gates, senior pastor at Asheville'due south Greater Works Church of God in Christ and a driving force in numerous surface area nonprofit and social justice groups, including Eagles Wings Community Evolution Corp. A native of K Rapids, Mich., Gates wasn't aware of the Rosenwald/Washington collaboration until recently, but he was so moved by what he calls "a phenomenal story" that he quickly signed up to help Shabazz.
"Love and the unity for humanity was the driving strength for [Rosenwald, Washington and Black communities] to say, 'Look, nosotros're going to put it all on the line and brand sure all of this happens,'" Gates says. "And it really speaks to the pedagogy of our children, even today, that they have it and then easy, but these are the challenges that [previous generations] went through to have instruction, so information technology would behoove them to embrace pedagogy as much equally possible."
Another of import collaborator is Emerge Gooze, a member of Congregation Beth Israel's Social Activity Committee, who learned nearly Rosenwald equally office of her Asheville synagogue'southward book discussion grouping. She was and then inspired to connect with Shabazz and help in her efforts. Gooze notes that while Congregation Beth State of israel has previously partnered with other interfaith groups and churches, something nearly working with the Friends of the Mars Loma Anderson Rosenwald School feels different.
"I've lived hither 12 years, and I have not known about the Black community and the African American history here. I'm learning it now just similar many, many other people are learning since George Floyd['s murder in May 2020]," Gooze says. "Merely this isn't out of violence. It's out of a wonderful history, then I experience actually excited about it."
Together, they've helped organize a series of events, including a screening of Aviva Kempner'due south feature-length documentary, Rosenwald (Lord's day, May xv, at Greater Works Church of God in Christ); presentations by Andrew Feiler most his journeying photographing Rosenwald Schools (Sunday, May 22, at Congregation Beth Israel); and the Long Ridge Community'southward Annual Homecoming (Sunday, Sept. 4, at the school and Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church building) where descendants of Washington, Rosenwald and Frederick Douglass are currently slated to speak.
For more information, visit avl.mx/bdx.
Source: https://mountainx.com/arts/friends-of-the-mars-hill-anderson-rosenwald-school-complete-repairs-to-historic-building/
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