Rockville

PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

In 1872, Montgomery County started requiring one public school be opened for Black children in each county. Black residents had been paying taxes for twelve years for white children to attend public schools. The new schools were required to be segregated. The Black communities, who paid taxes to the county, had to provide their own schools. Often a family in the community would donate land, and the families would raise money to build a one-room schoolhouse with a pot-bellied stove and an outhouse. The county sent them second-hand books, but no teaching supplies, so the teachers and families had to pay for blackboards, slates, slate pencils or chalk, a bucket for water, and a school bell. They even had to raise money and buy their own school bus from the county.