Restoring part of Charlotte’s Black history centers on saving a Jim Crow-era school
The wooden schoolhouse building that has stood for a century languishes on the site of a north Charlotte apartment complex — a stark symbol of the city’s pattern of casting aside its history in favor of the shiny and new.
From the outside, the building that dates to the 1920s is an unassuming, dilapidated structure with boarded-up windows, surrounded by the rapid growth in Charlotte’s University City area. But during the Jim Crow era, it educated scores of Black children who had limited educational opportunities otherwise.
Now, the Charlotte Museum of History is working to raise $1 million to restore the building, known as the Siloam School.
So far, the museum has raised more than half of that goal, including through contributions from the city of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, Bank of America and the Lowe’s Foundation. To donate, go to: https://charlottemuseum.org/siloam/.
A look inside the school
On Thursday, the museum launched a virtual tour of the former school, and held a virtual event Thursday evening to ramp up its ongoing fundraising effort.
The tour provides a first glimpse inside the historic building, which is in disrepair and in danger of demolition if it is not moved from its location at the Mallard Glen apartments, according to Fannie Flono, a board member at the museum who chairs the project to save the school.
The money would go toward moving the schoolhouse to the museum’s northeast Charlotte site, restoration work and reopening the building with exhibits, she said. Flono also said the museum would like to use it as a space for community conversations about racial inequities.
“It is important to be able to see our history and to be able to learn from it,” said Flono, a former editor at the Charlotte Observer and author of “Thriving in the Shadows: The Black Experience in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.”
“If you don’t see it, it’s really really hard to understand what it was like and how it is that we are where we are today,” she said.
A ‘point of pride’
The Siloam School was one of thousands of Rosenwald Schools built in the segregated rural South. Educator and author Booker T. Washington led the effort to build the schools with the financial support of Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck and Co.
North Carolina had the most Rosenwald Schools out of any state — 813, including school-related facilities — and Mecklenburg County had more than any county in the state.
The Siloam School is one of about seven Rosenwald schools in the county that is remaining, and Flono said it is among the oldest. The other buildings are in varying degrees of shape, such as the renovated Billingsville school in Grier Heights.
Flono said the Siloam School would be the first Rosenwald School in the county to be used for community discussions about racism.
The Rosenwald fund did not contribute to the construction of the Siloam School, but the community did use the same architectural plans as other Rosenwald Schools.
Typically, in addition to Rosenwald’s funds, local communities would raise money or provide land for the schools, said Stephanie Deutsch, author of “You Need a Schoolhouse,” a book about Washington and Rosenwald’s partnership.
That makes the program particularly remarkable, she said, especially because many of the community members had very little. They often were sharecroppers and the children of slaves, or even former slaves themselves.
“In many cases they had extremely limited education opportunities for themselves,” she said. “They didn’t have a lot of money, but it was a point of pride to have a school.”
Rosenwald Schools helped lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement, Deutsch said. The late Congressman John Lewis attended a Rosenwald School, as did the late poet Maya Angelou.
Restoring a landmark
When it opened, the school served students in what was then the rural Mallard Creek area. In many of the years it operated, around 40 to 60 students were registered at Siloam.
Now, the area that likely held those students’ desks is empty, with peeling paint on the walls.
But many of the features remain: there’s the industrial room, where trade skills like agriculture and mechanics were taught, the original soft green or tan paint, and the cloakrooms, where many students recall as the place where teachers carried out disciplinary measures.
There was no electricity, so the school was designed to maximize natural light.
The Siloam School is on the National Register of Historic Places, and to keep it that way, the museum will restore the building to its historic integrity, Flono said.
“It’s been very disheartening to see that a lot of Black history in the community has been lost,” she said. “It’s really important to not only save some of these buildings that have historic importance to African Americans and to the general public.”
Flono said she’s hopeful the museum will start moving the school by the summer.
To view the virtual tour, visit https://charlottemuseum.org/product/inside-siloam-school/.
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 6:30 AM.
