The Long Ridge School

In 1928, the Madison County School Board erected a new two-room school structure where the old building stood, using the Rosenwald School Plan No. 20, leaving the industrial room off the new building.

In 1929, $750 in monies came from the Rosenwald Fund of North Carolina and were matched by State, Madison County, and the Long Ridge Community monies.

John Ferguson of the Long Ridge Community gave the $200 for the community match, according to oral tradition by Ms. Dorothy Coone of the community, school, and History Committee. Another acre of land was purchased in 1927, adjacent to the older school lot, from J.M. Rice and wife for $150. This additional land was required to secure Rosenwald funds for the new building, a Rosenwald requirement. Total cost for the school was $2,093.

Eighty-three Negro children were enrolled in Madison County colored schools in 1930 according to the North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction, “9th smallest of any county in the state.”

This beautiful new school building was a two-teacher school house that was intended to served all the colored students of Madison County through the seventh grade.

According to oral interviews with Manuel Briscoe, Augusta Ray, and Shirley Sewell, the Long Ridge School was in this community from 1906 until the Rosenwald School was built, (“Long Ridge Schools in Memory and On Record,” paper by Edwin B. Cheek, 1983, Mars Hill College Archives).

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