Merritt School

The Merritt School is significant as a school building constructed under the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund program. From 1913 to 1937, the Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund helped finance over 5,358 school buildings, teacher's homes, and industrial buildings for African American education in fifteen Southern states. The Rosenwald School Building Fund represents a benchmark in the history of black education, representing the most important philanthropic force that came to aid of African Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. As a result of the Rosenwald Fund's initiatives, more black children went to school longer and with better trained teachers in better constructed and equipped schools. The school-building effort awakened the public school authorities and the general public to the need for more adequate educational provisions for African Americans. Remaining Rosenwald Schools, such as the Merritt School, are the last remaining vestiges of one of the most important school building projects ever undertaken in the United States. They also reflect African Americans' pursuit of education and their struggle for educational opportunities in the segregated South.

As a Rosenwald-funded school, the Merritt School is significant as a building that was constructed according to designs and specifications supplied by Samuel Smith and the Rosenwald Southern Office in Nashville. Built according to Designs 20 and 20-A - Two Teacher Schools as found in Smith's Community School Plans, the Merritt School building reflects the architectural plans and specifications provided by the Rosenwald Southern Office to ensure the construction of a quality facility. The Julius Rosenwald School Building Fund was one of the most important and ambitious school building projects ever undertaken. Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald were determined to provide up-to-date educational facilities for African Americans. As such, these school buildings incorporated industrial rooms, libraries, cloakrooms, heating stoves, and folding doors between rooms to use facilities as community centers. Plans dictated east/west orientation for maximization of natural light, window shades, sanitary privies, and interior paint schemes. So revolutionary were these mass-produced, standardized designs, that education officials soon began building white schools according to these plans as well. By 1928, one in five rural schools for blacks was a Rosenwald School. By the 1930s, these modem buildings had replaced thousands of old shanty schoolhouses. These school buildings set the standard not only in regard to schoolhouse architecture but they influenced the construction, architecture, and maintenance of other structures in rural and nearby areas.