Rosenwald School restoration project Okahumpka, FL

Fundraiser established for the Okahumpka (Florida) Community Club, Inc's Rosenwald School Restoration Project:

This project is to historically restore our Rosenwald School and have educational and interpretive displays about the history of Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington Phd., and Okahumpka native citizen and Florida Civil Rights Leader Virgil D. Hawkins, Esq. We will also build a new support facility with restrooms and meeting space for visitors, which will also be the "Virgil Hawkins Community Center." 

The Remarkable History of The Rosenwald Schools

After joining the Tuskegee Institute Board in 1912, Julius Rosenwald enthusiastically embraced the idea of partnering with African American communities in the South, many of them extremely rural, that were already raising money to build the schoolhouses that state school systems were not providing. Booker T. Washington proposed that part of the funds Rosenwald donated to Tuskegee in honor of his 50th birthday be used for a pilot project to build six schools in nearby Alabama.

Rosenwald agreed to contribute a portion of the costs of each school as long as both communities and local governments participated. This program led to the construction of 5,357 schools and related buildings over a 20-year period in mainly rural areas of 15 Southern states. Even in the face of poverty and severe discrimination, families contributed land, materials, labor and – dollar for dollar—slightly more than the Rosenwald Fund itself in order to offer education to their children.

These buildings – most of them one or two-room schoolhouses on country roads surrounded by fields and woods – were a source of great pride and affection in their communities. The schools educated one-third of African-American children of the South in the years before the end of legal segregation and gave them a chance for a better life. Following implementation of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling many fell into disrepair or passed into private hands.

In recent times communities from the suburbs of Washington, DC to East Texas have come together to restore and preserve a number of these simple structures, familiarly referred to “Rosenwald Schools.”

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Okahumpka Rosenwald School: Nearly Abandoned But Now Reclaimed

By Stephanie Deutsch

In 1930 a two-teacher Rosenwald school opened its doors in the central Florida farming

town of Okahumpka. It stood on land donated, in part, by neighbors Virgil and Josephine Hawkins. Thirty years later, in 1960, the school closed as integration became the law of the

land. At that time, the Hawkins’ son, Virgil Jr., was ending a ten-year court battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, begun when he was denied admission – on the basis

of his race – to law school at the nearby University of Florida. His success in that multi-year lawsuit eventually opened the University’s doors to Black law students. The school building, owned by the Okahumpka Community Club since 1970, served for many years as a site for Meals on Wheels and other activities but in recent time had been vandalized and was deteriorating. The Club was even considering tearing it down when two law enforcement officers of very different backgrounds injected renewed energy to the effort to preserve it. Chip D’Amico is a retired police sergeant from Geneva in upstate New York, whose hobby of metal detecting brought him to the school grounds and his role as the Club’s fundraising chair. Charles Fields grew up in Okahumpka. His older sister and brother attended the school, but it closed the year he turned six. For 36 years Charles was a case manager for the FBI stationed in Los Angeles but returned to Okahumpka in retirement and enthusiastically joined the effort to preserve the school. Of the 105 Rosenwald schools built in Florida, only 23 remain. This year the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Okahumpka school one of the 11 most endangered sites in the state. The Community Club is hopeful that a grant from the state will help jump-start its restoration activities.

On Saturday, November 13, 2021 about 65 neighbors and friends gathered to dedicate a historic marker in front of the schoolhouse and to celebrate the renewed commitment to it. The marker was created with funding from the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation represented by its president Jerry Klinger. He told of his father being liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945 by American GI' cs and of his commitment to building a stronger country in part by commemorating the contributions of Jewish Americans like Julius Rosenwald. Harriet Hawkins Livingston represented the Hawkins family, describing her uncle Virgil as “the South’s most patient man.” He eventually practiced law in nearby Leesburg and was revered as someone who rarely, if ever, turned down a client for inability to pay regular fees. Mr. Hawkins died in 1988.

And I was there representing the Campaign to create a Julius Rosenwald & Rosenwald Schools National Historical Park, to honor Virgil Hawkins and the way he took his sense of citizenship out into a hostile world with determination and dignity, and to share the moment with members of my family. My son Noah and grandsons Julius and William are descendants of Julius Rosenwald. But it was also a particular joy to be with my daughter-in-law, Megan Cogburn, and her parents. Dianne Lasher Cogburn grew up in Okahumpka; her parents and the live- stock feed company they ran are well remembered. Will Cogburn is from neighboring Leesburg. In my remarks I said, “the fact that we are all here together, with our various connections to this place, is testimony to the commitment we share to the ongoing work of building a strong and inclusive country, one where everyone benefits from the promises of freedom and opportunity – promises made real, then and now, in this Building.” The light rain that had been falling when we all arrived at the school stopped in time for the program to move outside for the uncovering of the marker. The ceremony concluded with the crowd singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” – an anthem written by Floridians James Weldon Johnson, a three-time Rosenwald Fund fellow, and his brother Rosamund. The sound was one of joyful, hopeful harmony.

The Rosenwald Park Campaign is working to preserve and share the inspiring story of Julius Rosenwald’s visionary philanthropy and the commitment he and Booker T. Washington made to providing education to African American children in the face of relentless prejudice and injustice. The Okahumpka School is part of that legacy. Stephanie Deutsch is the author of “You Need A Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald And the Building of ‘Schools for the Segregated South” and a committed member of Rosenwald Park Campaign Board.

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We truly appreciate your support of this historic and community project.

Chip D'Amico