RESTORING A 127-YEAR OLD AFRICAN AMERICAN SCHOOLHOUSE
Preserving the history of our area.
Featured on the Kelly Clarkson show!
Rev. Dr. Linda Settles is a Missouri church pastor who rallied her predominantly white congregation to step up and help restore the state's oldest surviving schoolhouse for African American children. She explains how her congregation helped the St. Louis County Parks Foundation painstakingly move the historic landmark to a public park so kids can come and see it for generations to come.
Built in 1894, “African School No. 4” is the oldest surviving one-room schoolhouse for African Americans in Missouri. The building has been moved to Faust Park’s Historic Village, where it will be restored, furnished, and maintained. Interpretive signage will tell the story of Black students in the County and the families who sued to have a school built for their children.
The Plight for Education.
While Missouri’s Constitution established free education for all people ages 5 to 21 after the Civil War, the reality was far different.
An attendance rule made it so that Black schools had to have at least 20 students. Black residents had enough students for a school yet, the directors of the Chesterfield School District refused to build one.
The city’s Black residents took the case to court and won in 1893. The following year, the school was built for $600.
The school remained open into the 1950s.
History on the Move
“I remember walking up these little steps and through the front door, and a little desk up front, you know, waiting for the kids to come.
You had to be everybody: You had to be the gym teacher, the arithmetic teacher, the reading teacher. So you had to be kind of experienced in all of those classes to keep the kids interested. It’s a long day — long day.
I think it'll be a great thing for people to just look back and say from whence we come. We no longer have to go to a one-room school."
— Dora Frazier
Substitute Teacher, African School No.4
