For several years, the Georgia Department of Education provided reports on the state of Georgia’s schools. These reports are a goldmine for photos of old schools. Although most are not extant, they provide context for what schools were like in the early 1900s.

The Rosenwald School Fund formally began in 1917. However, Julius Rosenwald started donating money to help build schools in the South for Black schoolchildren as early as 1912. From 1912 to 1932, Rosenwald Funds helped fund the building of almost 5,000 schools. In the state of Georgia, 242 schools were built in 103 counties (Jones, 2021).

The 1921 school report that includes the above photo shares (p. 68), “The Jasper County Training School, at Monticello, has been completed. This is a building of the most modern type, with six large class-rooms, two smaller rooms, auditorium, ship-room, and ample cloak room space. The aid of the General Education Board has made it possible to completely equip on room for Home Economics teaching.” The school was built at the cost of $8,000. Black community members provided $4,200. The general education fund provided $2,200, and the Rosenwald Fund provided the rest.

The school is no longer standing.

For additional reading, I recommend this blog post titled, “From Equalization Schools to Desegregation in Monticello, Georgia: A Historical Sketch” and a newspaper article in The Monticello News titled, “A Forgotten Black History of Monticello-JCTS.”