Bernard School

Before the ambassadorships, Carl Rowan was a student here. The son of a cook and cleaner and a man who stacked lumber, he was raised in McMinnville during the Depression and graduated from Bernard School in 1942 as class president and valedictorian. He studied at Tennessee State and Washburn, and became one of the first African Americans commissioned as a Navy officer. The school he left behind was a Rosenwald school, built for the town's Black children, and it was razed in 1982.

What the plaque says

Bernard School Bernard School was the segregated facility for African-American education in McMinnville, Tennessee. In the summer of 1921, Professor J. E. Wood, principal of the City School for Negroes, investigated the Rosenwald Building Program and invited the committee to McMinnville to consider building an adequate school for his people. Staff from the State Department of Education met with members of the city that resulted in a planned campaign for building funds, to which the African-American community contributed $1,000.00. In the fall of 1921, the present site was purchased for erection of a seven-teacher school building that opened in January 1922. CONTINUED Months later, the school was named for Ollie H. Bernard, the Rosenwald agent for Tennessee, who aided in brining the school to a successful completion. On August 17, 1946, fire completely consumed the original structed. In 1947 the school was rebuilt. Journalist, author and diplomat Carl T. Rowan was its most distinguished alumnus. The first African-American Deputy Secretary of State and the first African-American Director of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Rowan also served as the Ambassador to Finland. The school remained a part of the Warren County School system until it was razed in 1982.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Rock Island State Park — 11 mi
  A park where the Collins, Rocky and Caney Fork rivers meet at the head of Center Hill Lake, with a gorge of waterfalls below a 1917 dam and the remains of a cotton-mill town.
• Savage Gulf State Park — 17 mi
  Roughly 19,000 acres of gorge and sandstone bluff on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, a state park of its own since 2022, with the Stone Door and a National Natural Landmark.
• Fall Creek Falls State Park — 23 mi
  A New Deal park on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, where Cane Creek has cut a gorge and a 256-foot waterfall drops into it.
• Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park — 23 mi
  A 2,000-year-old enclosure of piled stone and earth on the bluffs above the forks of the Duck River, built by Native people between about 80 and 550 A.D., with a museum and waterfall trails.

More markers nearby

• Carl T. Rowan — steps away
• Anthia Brady Hughes 1868-1949 Willie Huges 1895-1986 — steps away
• Morgan's Headquarters — 0.4 mi
• Lucy Virginia Smith French — 1.6 mi