Orange County NC Website
64 <br /> Morris Grove School <br /> 7. Morris Hogan had a long-standing passion for education as a passport to a better <br /> life for his own and other black children.Yet in the late i800s,the Orange County <br /> school board had few funds for school construction and operation. To fill the void, <br /> the board sanctioned the opening of many simple, usually one-room, segregated <br /> schools that were built and operated by local individuals or groups. <br /> Morris won permission to create the Morris Grove Elementary School, using his <br /> own land and funds, at what is now 402 Eubanks Road. It is remembered as a <br /> simple frame structure with only pump water, outdoor toilets and a spartan <br /> interior heated by a wood stove in cold weather. The school probably stayed in <br /> operation from the 188os to the 192os, until tax-based public schools took over.All <br /> of the Hogan children and some of the grandchildren attended it. "We walked <br /> through the woods on a muddy wagon path to get there," said Samuel Rogers, 65, <br /> who went to the school through third grade. "Didn't have no shoes most of the <br /> time. Once I got there, I had to hold my feet up to the sun to get them warm." <br /> The school was a wooden, one-room, simple frame structure with only pump water, <br /> outdoor toilets and wood stove heating. The original doors are covered in brick. A <br /> cement porch was added. The house is owned by Mazie Hogan Cradle, a former <br /> Morris Grove student. <br /> 32 <br />