Central Agricultural School

Rosenwald schools were built on a bargain. The Rosenwald Fund, begun in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family, offered matching grants. Black communities had to raise the money, often giving land and labor, and white school boards had to agree to run and maintain the buildings. Black communities contributed about $4.7 million toward 5,388 schools across 15 states. This four-room wooden school came to Donaldsonville from St. James Parish in 2001, when the museum moved it onto its grounds, so schools like it stand on community money as well as the Fund's.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• E. D. White Historic Site — 20 mi
  A National Historic Landmark house of about 1790 on Bayou Lafourche, built by enslaved people and home to two Whites, a governor and a Chief Justice, with an exhibit on the bayou's history.
• Whitney Plantation — 21 mi
  A museum on a former sugar plantation along the River Road that tells its story through the people who were enslaved there, with memorials to 107,000 enslaved Louisianans and 2,200 children.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 23 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Wetlands Acadian Cultural Center — 23 mi
  A Jean Lafitte National Historical Park center on Bayou Lafourche with Acadian and bayou-life exhibits, a 200-seat theater and ranger-guided boat tours to the E. D. White house.

More markers nearby

• African American Life — steps away
• The Culture — steps away
• The Swamp — steps away
• Bicentennial Jazz Plaza — steps away