Ruffin Rosenwald School

Front inscription

This frame building dates to 1928-29 and originally housed a segregated school for Black residents of Ruffin. Its cost was paid by local African Americans, the school district, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. It replaced another Rosenwald school built in 1920-21 that had burned. Approx. 5,000 Rosenwald schools were built in S.C. This is the only one known to still stand in Colleton Co.

Ruffin Equalization School

This building was replaced by Ruffin High School and Elementary School, built across Smyly Road in 1954 and 1962. Both were funded by the S.C. equalization program, an effort to preserve segregation by improving Black schools. The elementary campus closed in 1967 and was added to the high school. Ruffin H.S. desegregated in 1970 but remained predominantly Black until it closed in 2002.