Celebrating the Completion of the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School

The Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School serves as a Community Cultural Center and an Interpretive Museum intended to promote a fuller understanding of southern Appalachian Black history and to enhance education at all levels.

The Friends of the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School and the Madison County Board of Education are hosting a commemorative event celebrating the completion of the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School Rehabilition Project (2009-2022).

The program takes place on Wednesday, September 21, 2022.

•   3 p.m. – Program in Broyhill Chapel, MHU Campus
•   4 p.m. – Visit the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School and Mount Olive Baptist Church
•   5 p.m. – Fish Fry in Broyhill Pavilion (Reservations needed)
•   6 p.m. – Music by Westsound in the Fellowship Hall

To RSVP for the September 21 event, contact Willa Wyatt, [email protected] or text (828) 206-3922.

Descendants of Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald to Speak

On Sunday, October 2, 2022, the Rosenwald Collaborative and Mars Hill University will present a panel from 3–4:30 p.m. at Broyhill Chapel. Kenneth Morris, Peter Ascoli, and Stephanie Deutsch will share memories and knowledge of their ancestors.

All the speakers have a connection to either Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute, or Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, and Company. Rosenwald and Washing-ton partnered in the early 1900s to build more than 5,000 elementary schools in the south for children of color. One of these schools, the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School located in the Long Ridge community, was built in 1930.

Morris is the great-great-grandson of Washington and also a descendant of Frederick Douglass. He is also cofounder and president of the Rochester, NY-based nonprofit Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives (FDFI), which works “to build strong children and to end systems of exploitation and oppression.”

Deutsch is a descendent of Rosenwald via marriage and the author of You Need a Schoolhouse: Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, and the Building of Schools for the Segregated South.

Ascoli is the grandson of Rosenwald and author of Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South.

Broyhill Chapel is located on the campus of Mars Hill University at 388 Cascade Street, Mars Hill. For details about this event and to RSVP, please visit Malaprops.com/rosenwald-school-events.