Featured Grant
Scrabble School
VFH Grants Help Tell the Story of a Historic Rosenwald School
Along rural route 522 west of Culpeper sits the Rappahannock African-American Heritage Center in a newly renovated building that was Scrabble School.
Built with Rosenwald funds, this two-room school served African American children in grades 1 through 7 between 1921 and 1968. Following its closure after integration it became a boarded-up, dilapidated structure, background to a county dumpster site until the 1990s.
Thanks to dedicated alumni, the Scrabble School Preservation Foundation was created and served as the impetus to find a new use for the building that would honor its important educational and architectural heritage.
VFH has supported this effort with a series of three grants, dating to 2006. VFH support began with funding for a community mapping project, a first step in a long-term effort to interpret the history of Scrabble School. This was followed in 2008 and 2009 by support of two interpretive exhibits (one physical, one web based) on the history of the school.
In 2009, the building opened as the County Senior Citizen Center, with a dual use as a Heritage Center.
Scrabble School provides a window into the story behind Julius Rosenwald and his effort to build, upgrade and furnish school houses for black students throughout the South (some 5000 in all). There were 371 Rosenwald schools in Virginia alone.
The efforts of the Scrabble School Preservation Foundation with support from private and public organizations such as Lowe's, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and VFH, have ensured that the history of this school, its students and the role the school played in the community will not be forgotten.
