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<br /> NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No.1024-0018
<br /> (8-86)
<br /> United States Department of the Interior
<br /> National Park Service
<br /> National Register of Historic Places
<br /> Continuation Sheet
<br /> Section number 8 Page 8 Ridge Road School
<br /> Orange County, NC
<br /> established in 1902 by African American educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and Laurinburg Institute in
<br /> Scotland County, created in 1904 by Emmanuel Monty and Tinny McDuffie, remained alternatives for
<br /> black children.11
<br /> The OCBE accelerated its school improvement program when funding became available during the
<br /> 1910s. During the 1911-1912 term, seven of twenty-three African American schools were log. Nine of
<br /> the total number were repaired over the course of the year. None of the schools had factory-made desks,
<br /> but rather eleven were furnished with handcrafted desks and the remainder with benches. Four new
<br /> buildings were erected for white students, resulting in a total of forty-seven frame schools, twenty-eight of
<br /> which had manufactured desks. From 1912 until 1917, the OCBE subsidized construction of between two
<br /> and five frame schools each term, gradually replacing obsolete structures. In November 1915, all school
<br /> committees were directed to build two sanitary privies at every school in the county. By fall 1917, the
<br /> OCBE operated forty-eight frame schools for white children and one log and twenty-six frame schools for
<br /> African American youth. With few exceptions, one or two teachers provided first-through seventh-grade
<br /> instruction. Some African American children attended Hackney's Industrial and Education Institute, a
<br /> private school on Merritt Mill Road in Chapel Hill established in 1912 by Rock Hill Baptist Church
<br /> minister Louis H. Hackney. Black citizens frustrated by the lack of upper-grade public education raised
<br /> $3,000 to facilitate the OCBE's 1916 purchase of the Hackney campus to house Orange County Training
<br /> School. In October 1917,principal Robert E. Malone and his wife and domestic sciences instructor
<br /> Mollie Holmes Malone (both Hampton Institute graduates) and two other teachers began offering
<br /> academic, industrial, and agricultural classes. By fall 1919, 215 students were enrolled.12
<br /> Despite some progress, inherent disparities between Black and white educational facilities prevailed.
<br /> Prominent educators including Nathan C. Newbold, James B. Dudley, and Charles H. Moore thus began
<br /> addressing the appalling condition of African American schools. Newbold, appointed Agent for Rural
<br /> Black Schools in 1913, remained in that role until becoming the state's first Director of the Division of
<br /> Negro Education upon its 1921 creation. With the aid of philanthropic concerns such as the Jeanes,
<br /> Peabody, Rosenwald, and Slater Funds, he hired supervisors and teachers for rural schools and
<br /> " State legislators first allocated funds for black elementary schools in 1910. Jim Sumner,"The Development of
<br /> North Carolina's Public School System through 1940,"context essay prepared for the Survey and Planning Branch of the
<br /> North Carolina Historic Preservation Office, 1990,5-6;William S.Powell,North Carolina through Four Centuries(Chapel
<br /> Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 1989),445-447;North Carolina Department of Public Instruction,Biennial Report of
<br /> the Superintendent of Public Instruction to Governor W. W.Kitchin for the Scholastic Years 1910-11 and 1911-12(Raleigh:
<br /> Edwards and Broughton, 1912), 8-9; Crow,et,al.,A History of African Americans in North Carolina, 155-158.
<br /> 12 OCBE meeting minutes,County Superintendent's statistical report for 1911 and 1912,July 1, 1912,and November
<br /> 1, 1915;M.C. S.Noble,"The Orange County Training School for Negroes,"The High School Journal,Vol.2,No. 5 (May
<br /> 1919), 141-144;"Pioneer Negro Educator Dies," Charlotte Observer,December 20, 1937,p.4.
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