SAVE JONES SCHOOL!

Save Jones School has great news!! J. J. Jones High School is once again in the hands of the community!! 

THANK YOU to everyone who attended one of dozens of meetings, made a phone call to the Surry County Commissioners, sent a letter or an email all your efforts resulted in the Commissioners unanimously voting to give our precious J. J. Jones High School back to the community.

Now we have an immediate need to raise funds to operate this historic site. We need $20,000 by July 1, 2022. THANK YOU to those who have already donated. Please share this GoFundMe with your family and friends 

Historical Facts:  In our town of Mount Airy, North Carolina, J.J. Jones High School was the only African American High School in Surry County prior to 1966. In 1938 Jones High School was built on the site of the Ararat Rosenwald School, which had burned a year earlier. It opened with grades nine through twelve but eventually served students of all grades who lived as far as forty miles away from the city of Mount Airy in North Carolina and Virginia. The land on which it dwells was donated by a former slave named Bob Dyson. Mr. Dyson donated the land for a school that would educate Black children. In the 1940's, there wasn't money to expand the ever growing school. The Jones High students, including Mr. Dyson's own descendants, were taught to form the bricks and built the auditorium, gymnasium and bandroom on campus which remains intact today. (See picture of students building auditorium above). The high school was a feeder school to many Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's).

This school closed 1966 due to desegregation. Afterwards, the site became an intergrated elementary school within the Mount Airy City School District until 1994 when the building was sold to Surry County. Currently it's being used as a successful family resource center managed by YVEDDI.

The site was recently awarded the status of National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

"Save Jones School" under the auspices of the African American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) of Surry was awarded the property by the Surry County Commissioners. THANK YOU to the Commissioners for putting their faith in the community and saving this historic site. AAHGS and Save Jones School will take possession of the campus on July 1, 2022 thereby restoring the entire campus to community who help build the school with blood, sweat and tears!

By July 1st we have an immediate need for $20,000 to continue operating the school at its current level. Thank you for your generous donation and please share this GoFundMe!!!

**Those who prefer to send a check please make it out to AAHGS and in the MEMO line put *Save Jones School and send to P.O. Box 7144, Mount Airy, NC 27030

PLEASE SHARE GOFUNDME