August 2, 2006

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            Two million of that would have been used to renovate the McElrath Building, the original school building on the site, as the National Rosenwald School Museum, and $800,000 would have converted the Culler Building into a small business incubator.

            The pledges of support that day came from three congressmen, Reps. David Price, Brad Miller and Bob Etheridge, as well as members of the Rosenwald family. Alice Rosenwald had promised to match the first $100,000 the DuBois School alumni raised.

            Home Depot, which is a sponsor for Rosenwald school renovation, has established a collection of artifacts from the schools built in the 1920s and 1930s at Fisk University, a collection that would have been transferred to the new national museum.

            The dream has vanished.

            The McElrath Building is rapidly falling into such serious disrepair it cannot be saved, Marshall Harvey, acting director for the W.E.B. DuBois Community Development Corporation, said this week. A portion of the roof fell in two years ago, and Wake County gave the DuBois Center $70,000 to remove the roof and buttress the exterior walls.

            Now the interior walls are leaning because the floors are sagging and falling. “That piece of history is gone,” Harvey said.

            “It would really help this area to have a national museum,” Harvey said, particularly since the town business people and leaders are talking about advertising Wake Forest as a destination for heritage tourism.

            Bettie Murchison, the former director of the DuBois Center, had lined up such heavy hitters as Brad Thompson, who served on John Edwards campaign staff, and architects specializing in historic renovation, but the president of the alumni association, Lawrence (Eugene) Perry fired them early this year.

            But you cannot keep a good woman or a good idea down.

            This spring, Harvey and Murchison found another Rosenwald school building, this one near Princeton in Johnston County.

            It has several advantages.

            There is one owner who enthusiastically backs the project.

            “The building is in better shape,” Harvey said. Although the gymnasium is gone, the rest of the school, including the auditorium with the original wooden-slat stage curtain, is intact.

            The town has annexed the property, and town officials are interested in the project.

            Harvey and Murchison have already talked to some banks and lending institutions.

            Although still just a dream, it probably means tourists will go down U.S. 70 to Princeton to visit the National Rosenwald School Museum rather than up North White Street, across East Juniper Avenue and into the DuBois campus.