Horry County · Marker 26-15
St. James Rosenwald School
S.C. Hwy. 707, Burgess community
Front inscription
St. James Rosenwald School, which stood here from the late 1920s until the early 1970s, was one of several African-American schools in Horry County funded in part by the Julius Rosenwald Foundation. Rev. Smart Small, Sr. (1891-1961), assisted by Eugene Beaty (1889-1958), Dave Carr (1886-1992), Henry Small (1897-1999), and Richard Small, Sr. (1893-1950) led fundraising efforts.
Reverse inscription
The school, built in 1928 or 1929, was a five-room frame schoolhouse typical of the larger rural schools built by the Rosenwald Foundation between 1917 and 1932. It educated about 150 students a year in grades 1-10, with five or six teachers. St. James Rosenwald School had two principals: Eula G. Owens (d. 1971), succeeded by her husband, Boyd Williams Owens (d. 1981). It closed in 1970 after desegregation.