Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School Quilt
by Anna Barnette
by Abigail Blankenship
by Lisa Zhao
The artwork of children once graced the walls of the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School. This two-room segregated school provided a close-knit learning community for Black students in grades 1-8 from 1930 -1965. Alumni speak of the passion for learning, reading, and the arts they gained, even with unequal resources like frayed, secondhand textbooks.
PAGE was honored in 2021 to offer the first educational programming for youth in the Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School (MHARS) since it closed in 1965. PAGE students’ creative work with hands helped them connect with historical
content: old photos, recorded interviews with alumni and historians, documentary films, books and poetry about Rosenwald schools, even a special visit from Smithsonian oral historian Kelly Navies.
A quilting project, led by Teaching Artist Jenny Pickens, became a lens for helping girls honor the stories of the school’s alumni and former teachers.
This PAGE StoryLab, connecting history and the arts, took place inside the historic two-room schoolhouse.
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