Universal Education. Governor Charles B. Aycock Birthplace State Historic Site. Advanced Genealogy Workshop Held at Aycock Birthplace

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1 264 Governor Aycock Road Fremont, NC Phone: Fax: Hours of Operation Tuesday - Saturday 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed Sunday and Monday Site Staff Leigh Strickland Site Manager Sarah Pittman Historic Interpreter Larry Barnes Site Assistant Hilda Manriquez Part-Time Staff The Orator Editor Sarah Pittman The Orator Universal Education Volume, XXX I Issue, 1 Winter/Spring 2014 Governor Charles B. Aycock Birthplace State Historic Site Advanced Genealogy Workshop Held at Aycock Birthplace On Saturday, February 15, Aycock Birthplace held the final installment of its genealogy workshops. This program was lead by Debbi Blake, Collection Services Section Manager for the North Carolina Division of Archives and Records and Chris Meekins, Head of the Microfilm Imaging Unit for the State Archives of North Carolina. According to our presenters, the object of genealogy research is to find birth dates, marriage dates, deaths dates, names of parents and the birth, death and marriage dates of their children. Genealogists need to look for records that show the connections between generations. Some sources for these records are online, local libraries, local government offices, state libraries, state archives and the national archives. There are four basic types of records that can be used in conducting research: (1) federal records, (2) state records, (3) county records and (4) private collections. The more in-depth someone gets when doing genealogical research, the more they will have to step out of their comfort zone to look at records. For instance, a researcher who is very familiar with marriage records may need to move away from those records and look at census records or land deeds. Also, the more in-depth the research, the greater the need is to examine original documents. This may mean that the researcher will need to become familiar with the geographical and legal history of the areas where their ancestors lived in order to find the original documents. Finally, the researcher must be aware of and abide by copyright laws. Debbi and Chris also stressed the importance of getting and staying organized. Doing so will prevent the genealogist from repeating research that has already been done. They recommended the use of research logs to keep track of what documents were found and where they were found. Research logs should include the researcher s name, the name of the ancestor, date relating to that person and the results of the search. The presenters wrapped up the workshop with a hands-on exercise in genealogy research. Overall, participants learned how to get organized and stay that way and they learned about resources that are often overlooked when doing genealogical research. Check us out on the site s Facebook page! pages/governor-charles-b- Aycock- Birthplace/ Page 1

2 Manager s Report In August 1893 construction was completed on Oak Plain School and it was put into service that school year. To commemorate the 120 th anniversary, Aycock Birthplace held a program entitled Reading, Writing, and Remembering. There was music, homemade ice cream and special guest speaker Dr. James L. Leloudis, Professor, Associate Dean for Honors and Director of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence at UNC-CH. In continuation of the celebration, Aycock Birthplace, in partnership with Wayne Community College, invited Claudia Brown, Survey & National Register Branch Supervisor and Architectural Survey Coordinator of the NC Historic Preservation Office to speak on Rosenwald Schools. In preparing for the 120 th program, research was conducted on early education. It is interesting how much education has changed over the course of history. To begin with, schools did not have a graded system, but, by the time Oak Plain School was built, public schools generally consisted of 1 st -7 th grades. Now, children usually start their education in pre-school and continue through the 12 th grade. Oak Plain s students received a basic education (reading, writing and arithmetic). Today s students go far beyond that (science, art, music, technology, foreign languages, etc). Also, in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, it was not mandatory for children to attend school. During the time Charles Aycock was in office ( ), some states had begun passing laws that made school attendance mandatory for children North Carolina was not among them. Gov. Aycock said, North Carolinians were not quite ready for this type of infringement of liberty. Now, it is required that all children receive some form of education. Comparing education of the past to current education, it is obvious that students today have a greater advantage than those of the past. At Aycock Birthplace, we seek to help them realize this through our educational programs. Students of the Oak Plain School. Date unknown. The Oak Plain School today. Page 2

3 Rosenwald Schools By Leigh Strickland Rosenwald School is the name informally given to over 5,357 schools, shops and teachers' homes in the United States which were built mainly for the education of African-Americans in the first half of the 1900s. The need came from the underfunding of public education for African-American children in the southern states, who were required to attend segregated schools. The Rosenwald Fund was established in 1917 by philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co. This fund donated over 70 million dollars to public schools, colleges and universities, museums, charities and African-American institutions. The school building program was one of the largest programs administered by the Rosenwald Fund. Using state-of-the-art architectural plans designed by professors at the Tuskegee Institute, the Rosenwald Fund spent more than four million dollars to build 4,977 schools (more than 800 were built in North Carolina more than in any other state), 217 teachers' homes and 163 shop buildings from Maryland to Texas. The Rosenwald Fund used a system of matching grants. African American communities raised more than $4 million to aid in construction. By 1932, the facilities could accommodate one- third of all African-American children in Southern schools. Research has found that the Rosenwald program accounts for a sizable portion of the educational gains of rural Southern blacks. This research also found significant effects on school attendance, literacy, years of schooling, cognitive test scores and Northern migration, with gains highest in the most disadvantaged counties. The schools ranged in size from one-teacher facilities up to seven-teacher facilities that offered full instruction from first grade through high school. In the program s early years, wooden two-teacher and threeteacher structures seem to have been most common. By the mid 1920s, brick construction and larger buildings began to appear more often. Few carried the name "Rosenwald" Julius discouraged such tributes. However, the schools did share a certain look. They were characterized by large banks of windows, an important feature in a time when electricity was scarce in rural areas. Designers specified arrangements of window shades to make best use of natural light. They also specified room size and height, blackboard and desk placement and paint colors. Inside, the buildings almost always included a meeting space. In the smaller schools, a movable partition could be taken down so that classrooms could be used as an assembly hall. Bigger schools featured a permanent auditorium. In 1932 the Rosenwald Fund staff and trustees started winding down the school construction grants. The decision to move away from the building program was based on the Rosenwald Fund s philosophy and changing priorities. It was felt that if the construction grants were continued indefinitely, southern school boards would remain dependent on the fund and contributions from local African Americans and continue to turn their backs on the responsibility for black education. They also wanted to redirect their resources. The stock market crash and the Great Depression wiped out much of the value of the Sears, Roebuck and Co. stock that supported the Rosenwald Fund, increasing the pressure to abandon the building program. One of the last Rosenwald schools was constructed in 1937 in Warm Springs, Georgia, at the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Southern Office closed at the end of that same year. In 1948 the Julius Rosenwald Fund distributed its last grants and went out of existence. In 2002 the National Trust placed Rosenwald Schools on the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list and created a special initiative to help raise awareness, find new uses, provide resources and assist in the preservation and rehabilitation of these schools. In 2011, Rosenwald Schools were awarded National Treasure status. Sources: Brown, Claudia R. A Survey of North Carolina s Rosenwald Schools. North Carolina Historic Site Preservation Office Feb 10, Feb 2014 < Hanchett, Tom. Saving The South s Rosenwald Schools. History South. n.d. 17 Feb 2014 < Leloudis, Dr. James L. Schooling in the New South. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, Rosenwald School Initiative. National Trust for Historic Preservation. n.d. 17 Feb 2014 < southern-region/rosenwald-schools/>. Rosenwald School. Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., n.d. 17 Feb 2014 < Page 3

4 Snow, snow and more snow! March March 11th 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Spinning and Candles* March 13th 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Open Hearth Cooking and Candles* March 15th 12:00 p.m. 3:00 p.m. Let s Go Fly A Kite! Visitors are welcome to come out and fly their kites. No registration necessary. March 18th 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Butter and Candles* March 27th 9:00 a.m. 2:00 p.m. Daffodil Open House Area program for Wayne County first graders Upcoming Events April April 1st 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. School Marm and Candles* April 7th, 8th, 10th & 11th 9:30 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Farm Heritage Days Area program for Wayne County fourth graders. April 29th 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Spinning and Candles* May May 1st 10:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. Natural Dyeing and Candles* *New this year! Students can participate in the hands-on activity of candle making and see a costumed demonstration for a fee of $2.00 per student. Page 4

5 Summer Coming Soon June 14th July 12th Our 2 nd Saturdays series is back! Updates and event info coming soon! Call or check out our website for more information : A Year in Photos The Orator is published by the Governor Charles B. Aycock Birthplace Advisory Committee, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the development of the Governor Charles B. Aycock Birthplace State Historic Site. The newsletter is published bi-annually and is available free of charge. To receive this publication, please call (919) or aycock@ncdcr.gov. The Governor Charles B. Aycock Birthplace State Historic Site is an agency within the Historic Sites Division of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Page 5