By Vicki Brown
On 375 Smiley Road in the small community of Ruffin, a historical marker stands near a little white wooden building with red trim. The marker was unveiled on February 19.
This building has an important history in Colleton County that goes back 94 years: it currently serves as the BZS Community Center, but in the past, it was one of the famous Rosenwald schools.
In 1915, Julius Rosenwald, who was the president of Sears and Roebuck, established a fund in his name to construct black schools throughout the South.
According to the S.C. Dept. of Archives and History, he and Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute, came up with the idea of matching grants. If a rural black community could come up with a contribution (monetary or labor) and convince the county’s white school board to agree to help with funding, Rosenwald would contribute one-fifth of the total cost.
Between 1917 and 1932, the Rosenwald Fund assisted in the construction of over 5,000 school buildings across the south.
Almost 500 buildings were constructed in South Carolina, including six in Colleton County: two at Ruffin (one burned and was replaced by the building that now houses the BZS Community Center), Oak Hill, Ritter, Rum Gully and Walterboro.
Rosenwald Schools played a critical role in educating over one-third of South Carolina’s underserved black children.
As time passed, many of the old schools became neglected and abandoned. However, Senator Tim Scott and Al Jenkins, a small business outreach coordinator with Scott’s office, is helping to restore the buildings and give them new life to serve their communities. “The initiative is to save them and get them in viable and restorable condition, and then turn them into community centers,” Jenkins said in a written statement.
Built in 1928-29, the building was Ruffin’s only school for black children. According to official Rosenwald records, “the original Ruffin Rosenwald school had been built in 1921-22, but burned and was rebuilt in 1928-29, costing a total of $5,260 ($300/Rosenwald, $800/ white, $400/Negro and $3,760/public money collected from the fire insurance.”
The school closed after the last class graduated in 1953 and sat empty until 1964, when the BZS Community Center was organized for the residents of the community or area to use and enjoy. Three churches came together to help the community raise funds to save the building: Buckhead United Methodist Church, Mt. Zion Baptist Church, and Sykes Savannah United Methodist Church.
Since that day in 1964, the BZS Committee has done much to preserve and protect the building, while retaining as much of the original building as possible. And during all of those years, one of the dreams of the committee has been to have the BZS Center and its history listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
At the unveiling, several people spoke about their joy in reaching this milestone in Ruffin, but none were happier than Alice Belton Jackson, a 1953 graduate of that school, the last class to graduate in the Rosenwald School. “We had a good time here,” said Jackson who is 84 years old. “I graduated with 27 other students, and 13 are still living. We had teachers who made us learn, and parents who made us learn, too. We had outside bathrooms and outside water, but we enjoyed school.”
After the unveiling, Sallie Stephens and Vivian McFadden, members of the BZS Community Center/Rosenwald School gave tours of the building.
Saturday’s event was sponsored by Colleton County Council, the BZS Community Center and the WEGOJA Foundation, whose mission is to support the efforts of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission to identify and promote the preservation of historic sites, structures, buildings, and culture of the African American experience in South Carolina, and to assist and enhance the efforts of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
Sirena Memminger, director of the BZS Community Center remarked that the day was special and that the Ruffin Rosenwald School Committee had worked hard to achieve their dream of a historical marker in front of the building.
On February 19, 2022, that dream finally came true.
