Constructed between 1929 and 1930 in Bath County on acreage where an earlier school for African Americans stood, the T. C. Walker School is one of two schools constructed in the county with assistance from the Rosenwald Fund, one of the most successful initiatives to provide universal schooling for black students during the era of segregation. Conceived by Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, the fund provided money to leverage other private and public funds to construct more than 5,000 schools for African Americans throughout the South, with more than 380 constructed in Virginia. For the Walker school, the Rosenwald Fund contributed $500 toward its construction, the county $3,595, and the black community $505. Based on plans supplied by the Rosenwald Fund, the building was a two-classroom school with banks of large windows and a movable partition. It operated until 1965, when the county integrated its public schools. Afterwards, the T.C. Walker School building sat vacant for a number of years before its conversion to apartments. By turns, it has also housed a hat and pocketbook factory, a photography studio, and an accounting office.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia