Davidson Colored School / Ada Jenkins School
(ca. 1937)
Davidson’s oldest public school building, the Ada Jenkins School is a rare example of an African American school building from the Jim Crow era.
212 Gamble Street, Davidson, NC 28036
The Ada Jenkins School, which opened in 1937 as the Davidson Colored School, is the largest and most prominent historic element of the built environment of Davidson’s traditionally African American Westside neighborhood. Built as a segregated school, the structure reflects the local Black community’s decades-long commitment to improving the education of its young people despite the difficulties posed by the era’s Jim Crow laws.
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In the early 20th century, rural Mecklenburg County communities relied primarily upon the outside assistance of the Rosenwald Schools, a national education program created through the collaborative efforts of Dr. Booker T. Washington and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, to support the education of local African American children. Davidson had no Rosenwald School, and the program’s schools in Huntersville and Cornelius were too far away to be reasonably accessible for Davidson’s African American community. In 1893, the town of Davidson had opened a substantial two-story brick school building for its White children supported by local taxes. That graded school had an enrollment of nearly two hundred students by 1911. No such effort was made for Davidson’s Black children, leaving them to be educated in small frame buildings in the town’s Westside neighborhood.
It was not until 1937 that a new brick six-classroom school, the Davidson Colored School, opened to serve the local African American community. But the very existence and continued support of that school was due primarily to the efforts and resourcefulness of the African American community that the school served. Ada Jenkins – one of three teachers from Davidson’s earlier Black schools who would join the new school’s staff – and P.T.A. President Logan Houston led the effort to build the new school, with the active support of the local Black community who participated in a range of fundraising activities to finance the school’s construction and its ongoing operations. Within its first ten years of operation, the school added a library and two more schoolrooms, in part because of its growing high school. The prior schools for African American children only educated their students through the eighth grade. Upon its opening, the new school also stopped at the eighth grade, but it added one grade each year after its opening until reaching the final eleventh grade customary for all local high schools before WWII. By the fall of 1939, the Davidson Colored School had a high school enrollment of 62 students.
Even after the new school opened, Mrs. Jenkins remained a strong presence in its operation. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she also led the school’s glee club and taught and played piano and organ. In 1955, following Jenkins’ death in 1944, the school was renamed the Ada Jenkins School to honor her significant contributions to education and the local community. Starting with the 1946-47 school year, the school became exclusively an elementary school, educating students in grades one through eight. Around 1958, the school was expanded with the addition of the gymnasium, a classroom wing, and a freestanding cafeteria. In 1966, following the integration of Mecklenburg County schools, the Ada Jenkins School closed, reopening in the 1970s as a community center providing a range of services and activities for Davidson residents.