The Lowndesboro School Project
We aim to transform Lowndesboro School into an historic site that acknowledges the efforts and achievements of Black people throughout the history of Lowndes County, filling a gap in the
narrative now told by historic sites here.
The Lowndesboro School is among the oldest surviving Reconstruction-era African American schoolhouses in the United States.
In Alabama’s rural Black Belt, the struggle of African Americans to attain an education and economic stability was (and remains) acute.
Lowndesboro School was founded by Dr. Mansfield Tyler, a formerly enslaved man who became an Alabama state legislator and leader of the Lowndesboro Colored Education Association. It stands as testimony to the value that a newly freed people placed on education as a means to achieve equality, independence, and prosperity.
Determined to establish a school after the Civil War, Tyler founded Lowndesboro School in 1867 for Black children and adults who were yearning for education.
To accommodate a growing congregation and student body, in 1868 and 1871, with aid from the Freedmen's Bureau, Tyler constructed new buildings that housed both a church and school. In 1880, Tyler built the Baptist church that stands today and in which the school operated until 1883 when the Lowndesboro Colored Education Association erected the separate schoolhouse on their property that still stands and is known as Lowndesboro School.
That Tyler established a school just two years after slavery was an impressive feat considering the community’s meager financial resources and ongoing white supremacy terrorism aimed at Black schools and churches in the South where thousands of teachers were threatened, whipped, or killed for their work with Black students.
Lowndesboro School’s connection to the Bolling Family spans generations: Elmore Bolling’s grandparents were among its first students during Reconstruction and five of his children attended school there on the day Elmore was lynched in 1947.
The Lowndesboro School remained open through the waning promise of Reconstruction and the oppression of the Jim Crow era.
As the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s turned a national spotlight on Lowndes County, renowned journalist, Jimmy Breslin, wrote a scathing article in the Washington Post in 1965 detailing deplorable conditions that Black students and teachers were forced to endure at a school located on Highway 80. In response, Alabama officials tore down that school to destroy the evidence, but Lowndesboro School, tucked away on a rural road, survived.
It stands for thousands of schools built by formerly enslaved people throughout the South that were allowed to deteriorate due to lack of adequate funding from public school districts or were destroyed by mobs during waves of white supremacy violence.
Lowndesboro School closed in 1967, in response to federal court desegregation orders.
For a time, the building served as an Office of Economic Opportunity Health Center
and later as a washateria.
It is the only example of a 19th century rural school for “colored” children
identified by the Alabama Historical Commission.
We aim to transform the Lowndesboro School into an historic site that acknowledges the efforts and achievements of Black people throughout the history of Lowndes County, filling a gap in the narrative now told by historic sites here.
We also plan to use the school as a center for programs to improve
education and employment outcomes for today’s local citizens.
The NPS grant provided a welcome gift to launch our restoration efforts,
but more money is needed to complete this ambitious project.
Please donate to preserve a concrete reminder of the
long history of African Americans striving for education in Lowndes County and throughout the South.
1867
Dr. Mansfield Tyler founds the Lowndesboro School.
1967
The Lowndesboro School is closed by federal order.
2011
Lucius and Myrtle K. Evans, Black owners of the land on which the school building sits,
donate it to The Elmore Bolling Initiative
2014
The Elmore Bolling Initiative petitions for and achieves
recognition of the school from the National Register of Historic Places.
2021
The Elmore Bolling Initiative is awarded a National Park Service African American Civil Rights Program grant.
This competitive Historic Preservation Fund program (administered by the NPS, Department of the Interior) preserves sites and stories related to the African American struggle to gain equal rights as citizens.
“It is my hope that the investment in our work by the NPS will produce a signature effort to preserve the history and memories of Black people’s striving and achieving during this era by creating a concrete reminder of our important and honorable past, bringing a hidden history to the forefront, enlightening present and future generations of Americans. Further, this investment by NPS creates opportunities for educational,economic and cultural advancements in Lowndes County, revitalizing this region and promoting further investments.”
— Josephine Bolling McCall
"It's exceptionally important that the Black experience be preserved and visible upon the American landscape. It's important that we tell these stories that are overlooked to equitably understand what it means to be an American. It's important that we invest in historic Black communities to stimulate revitalization and to foster interest in places that today seem to exist without history".
—Brent Leggs, Director,
African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund
For more information on this project please contact Josephine Bolling McCall at jo@bollinginitiative.org
For questions regarding the African American Civil Rights grant program, or to comment on this or any other proposed Historic Preservation Fund grant project, please contact the State, Tribal, Local, Plans & Grants Division, National Park Service, at 202-354-2020 or stlpg@nps.gov.
The Lowndesboro School is open by appointment only.
To make an appointment contact Josephine Bolling McCall jo@bolllinginitiative.org.