Valley Rewind: Rosenwald School for black students

In honor of Black History Month, the Swannanoa Valley Museum's February Valley Rewinds are celebrating black history in the Valley. Swannanoa Valley Schools were segregated well into the 1960s. Julius Rosenwald, the son of a German-Jewish immigrant and a part owner of Sears, Roebuck, and Co., contributed matching donations through the Rosenwald Fund to fund more than 5,000 schools nationwide for the education of African American students. In fact, by 1928, one-third of the South’s rural black school children and teachers were served by Rosenwald Schools. One of these schools was in Swannanoa. This photograph shows the school and some of its students in the 1930s. James Thaddis Sapp (far right) was the principal.