Darwin School

Darwin School was one of the Tennessee schools built with Rosenwald money, and the arithmetic of that program is telling. Between 1914 and 1932, Tennessee communities built 354 Rosenwald schools. The fund gave $291,250, African Americans contributed $296,388, white donors only $28,027, and tax revenue supplied the bulk, more than $1.3 million. Black communities gave more than the fund did. The matching grants helped persuade white-controlled county school boards to spend public money on Black schools. Darwin burned in January 1963, and desegregation reached the Upper Cumberland a year later.

What the plaque says

Darwin School West Cookeville Junior High School was constructed in 1928 for African American students with funding from the local community and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. In 1936 a high school was added to the junior high school and named to honor J. Claude Darwin, a white Cookeville businessman and member of the Putnam County Board of Education, who promoted education for African Americans. Darwin's first graduating class was in 1938. Darwin School provided education to the African American students of Putnam and surrounding counties until it burned in January 1963, prompting school desegregation in the Upper Cumberland a year later.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Cookeville Depot Museum — 0.7 mi
  The 1909 Tennessee Central Railroad depot in Cookeville's west side, now a museum with a model of the town in 1955 and a steam engine in the yard.
• Cummins Falls State Park — 6.5 mi
  A 75-foot waterfall and swimming hole on the Blackburn Fork, saved from a housing development in 2011 and opened as Tennessee's 54th state park.
• Burgess Falls State Park — 9.5 mi
  A day-use park on the Falling Water River, where a short trail passes three smaller falls on its way to a drop of more than 130 feet into a limestone gorge.
• Standing Stone State Park — 22 mi
  A New Deal park on Mill Creek named for a vanished stone that Native peoples revered and railroad builders blasted, with a lake, 1930s cabins and a marbles championship.

More markers nearby

• Putnam County's Only Public Execution — 0.9 mi
• Town Spring — 1.1 mi
• Israel Putnam 1717 - 1790 — 1.2 mi
• Capshaw School — 1.6 mi