Columbia School Teacher's Chair

Rosenwald schools provided education for Black communities in segregated Texas.

The 1876 Texas State Constitution established racial segregation of the public school system. In the decades that followed, public funds spent on building and staffing Black schools in Texas was only a fraction of the amount spent on white schools. Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932), philanthropist and leader of Sears, Roebuck and Company, partnered with Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), founder of the Tuskegee Institute, to address the racial education gap in the segregated South. Between 1913 and 1932, the Rosenwald fund they created helped build nearly 5,000 new schools across 15 Southern states, including Texas.

In West Columbia, Texas, a formerly enslaved man named Charlie Brown worked to become the largest landowner in Brazoria County before his death in 1920. He deeded portions of his land to the Black community to use for churches and schools. One of these sites became the Columbia School, originally built in East Columbia in 1921, and constructed with the help of Rosenwald funds. For nearly 30 years it served as the center of education for the Black children living in East Columbia. It was one of 466 Rosenwald schools constructed in Texas.

​​The school’s first teacher was Mrs. P. A. Franklin. Originally the school held classes through seventh grade and in the 1940s an eighth grade class was added. This chair was used by the teachers at the school, who taught subjects that included reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, and science. As the Rosenwald school program developed, grant funds were expanded to support teacher training and to build housing for educators in some communities. The Columbia Rosenwald School closed in 1949 after the West and East Columbia school districts consolidated.

In 1996, the school building was still standing but was being used as a hay barn. The Rosenwald Columbia School Project and the Columbia Historical Museum Board of Directors joined to develop a master plan to save and restore the building. As a result of their work, the school was saved, preserved, and moved to its current location in West Columbia where it reopened in 2009 as a museum and interpretive center.