Rosenwald Schools were created for educating black children in the Post-Reconstruction South, including North Carolina.  Please join us on Wednesday, May 6 at 7:00 PM at the OWASA Community Center, 400 Jones Ferry Rd, Carrboro, OR ONLINE via Zoom, to hear D-OGS Vice President and Orange County expert Richard Ellington present Rosenwald Schools in Orange County NC. 

 

Orange County, along with many other counties in the Post-Reconstruction South, was very late in providing public-supported schools for the "colored" communities after the Civil War. To address this, many private organizations stepped in to provide opportunities for these communities.

 

One of these was a foundation set up by Julius Rosenwald, a businessman who controlled Sears, Roebuck and Company in the early 1900s. He created a fund that revolutionized rural education across the South for Black communities.  This lecture will identify the four Orange County Rosenwald schools and provide detail how this process worked.

Richard was born in 1945 and raised in Carrboro. His father Carl Ellington was a prominent building contractor for many years in the Chapel Hill community. His mother Beulah Dillehay and her family moved here from Durham about 1912 so his grandfather could work in the Durham Hosiery Mill #4, now known as Carr Mill Mall. The Dillehay family lived across the street from the mill until the mill closed during the Depression.  Richard retired at the end of 2010 from UNC-Chapel Hill after 43 years in the IT division. He was conferred the Order of the Long Leaf Pine for his many years of outstanding public service to the people and State of North Carolina.

 

He has been a member of Durham-Orange Genealogical Society since 1992 and has served as President, Vice-President/Program Chair and newsletter editor for several years.  Richard is a founding member of the Lincoln High/Chapel Hill High Community Service Grant committee. This group is working to foster bridge-building between the high school communities that were legally segregated from each other for many years. This committee works to make some small financial grants to high school seniors in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro community who are working in their neighborhoods to build trust and promote interaction among all peoples.

 

He is a past President and long-time board member of the Chapel Hill Historical Society and is deeply interested in saving, promoting, preserving and presenting the history and heritage of our area. He sees exciting times ahead for the society.