Glade Spring School

Glade Spring School was built here in 1921-22 to serve Black children in grades 1-7. The three-teacher building replaced a deteriorated 19th-century structure. Support for its construction came in part from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, created in 1917 after Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington, head of Tuskegee Institute, had partnered in a school-building campaign. This fund helped construct about 5,000 schools for Black students across the rural South; Glade Spring was the only one of these in Washington County. Meredith Stuart, born in Glade Spring, attended Tuskegee under Washington’s leadership and taught here. The school closed in 1965 when the county’s schools were desegregated.