Historical Marker
St. John Colored School
Homer, Claiborne County · Louisiana
Julius Rosenwald, the Sears, Roebuck president, and Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee were the partners behind schools like this one, built from plans drawn at Tuskegee. Black communities had to bring matching money, land and labor, and white school boards had to agree to maintain the building. Black families gave about $4.7 million across the South, and roughly a third of the region's Black children studied in such schools. At St. John the families gave land and logs. The building burned later, in 1945 by one account and 1952 by another.
Where it stands
32.71817, -93.00057 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Germantown Colony Museum — 13 miTwo hewn-log buildings from an 1836 religious commune near Minden, the earliest of its kind in Louisiana, with a museum added in 1975.
- Eddie G. Robinson Museum — 21 miA state museum in a former women's gymnasium at Grambling State University, on the 408-win coach who sent more than 200 players to the pros.
- Lake Bistineau State Park — 30 miA 903-acre state park on a lake the Great Raft made, opened in 1946 with a separate section for Black visitors from 1956, and now known for cypress water and a lake that is drawn down.