Melissa N. Stuckey, Associate Professor of History and Director of Public History at the University of South Carolina, will present "Building Community through Building Rehabilitation: Rehabilitating Elizabeth City State University's Rosenwald School of Practice" as the 2024-2025 Timothy Donovan Lecturer at 6:00 p.m. Monday, March 3, in the Honors Auditorium (GEAR 026).

This presentation will examine efforts to rehabilitate a Rosenwald School building on the campus of Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), a historically Black university in North Carolina. The Rosenwald school building program was established by businessman and philanthropist Julius Rosenwald to improve educational facilities for African American children during the era of segregation. Of the 4,997 Rosenwald schools built between 1913 and 1937, approximately thirteen were built on college campuses where these "Practice Schools" were used for teacher training. ECSU's Rosenwald Practice School is the only remaining Rosenwald practice school in North Carolina and possibly the only remaining Rosenwald practice school in the United States.

The multimillion-dollar project to rehabilitate and reinhabit ECSU's Rosenwald Practice School has entailed years of planning, grant writing, archival research, collaborative partnerships, community outreach, and classroom education. In 2025, these efforts will culminate in the opening of a one-of-a-kind facility that will connect communities ranging from current students to the alumni of hundreds of North Carolina Rosenwald Schools to the rich legacy of African American efforts to acquire education in that state.

Melissa N. Stuckey joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina in 2023. Her research interests center on African American communities and institutions, Black migration movements, and early twentieth century Black freedom struggles. Committed to engaging the public in important conversations about African American history, Stuckey is involved in public history projects in North Carolina (mapping segregation-era African American businesses in Elizabeth City and African American cemetery preservation), South Carolina (Reconstruction-era Beaufort), and Oklahoma (mapping the business district in Boley). Her essays have appeared in the Journal of African American History and numerous edited volumes.  

The Donovan Lecture Series is named in honor of Timothy Donovan, former professor and chair of the department of history at the University of Arkansas, and has brought leading historians to campus. This event is sponsored by the History Department in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.