Blinn students hunt for the sites of 41 Rosenwald schools that once served Black children in the Brazos Valley

Somewhere across the Brazos Valley stood 41 schoolhouses built for Black children in the early 20th century, and a Blinn College history class is trying to pin down where each of them was before the people who remember them are gone.

The project, led by Blinn history professor W. Dale Weeks, is tracing the region's Rosenwald schools, built between 1917 and 1932 under a program Booker T. Washington started with Julius Rosenwald, who was then running Sears, Roebuck and Co. The program funded construction of more than 5,300 schools for Black students throughout the South, about 500 of them in Texas, according to the college.

"Most of them are gone now, but there are people out there who know where they were," Weeks said in Blinn's announcement on Monday. He pointed to former students, former staff and others who remember those communities.

An exhibit that asks for help

Blinn students working with the Brazos Valley African American Museum in Bryan have built an exhibit on the schools and the towns they served. The first version is up at the museum now. It includes maps and details on the schools, and a tablet and QR code let visitors add what they know about a school's location or their own ties to one.

So far the team has found sites where Rosenwald buildings still stand, including in Calvert, Anderson and Navasota, and other locations are still being researched. The researchers also want to record oral histories with people who attended or worked at the schools, since many of those stories never made it into written records.

"Most former students don't know that Booker T. Washington had a hand in building the school they went to," Weeks said.

Students doing the digging

Twenty-one Blinn students are taking part, splitting up work that ranges from reading historical records and old maps to library visits and calls to local organizations.

One Blinn graduate, Melissa Rutherford, has kept working on it for over two years while finishing a psychology degree at Sam Houston State University, interviewing former Rosenwald students and combing old newspaper articles at the Carnegie History Center in Bryan.

Weeks called the project a link between the college, the museum and the surrounding communities.

Anyone with knowledge of a school's location or history can add it at the museum exhibit or reach the team by emailing the research team at dale.weeks@blinn.edu.

Sources

blinn.edu