Pine Grove Elementary School
Pine Grove Elementary School, constructed in 1917, is one of six schools for African American students built in Cumberland County that are associated with the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
Philanthropist Rosenwald, who was part owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck and 
Company, and Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, established the Rosenwald Fund to improve educational opportunities for African American children in the American South. During its years of operation between 1917 and 1932, the fund contributed architectural plans and finances toward the construction in Virginia of more than 380 so-called Rosenwald schools.
Architecture professors at the Tuskegee Institute initially developed designs for one- or two-teacher schools. Pine Grove was an example of a two-teacher school.
The school has been recognized on the Virginia Landmark Register and National Register of Historic Places. The school is documented as part of Preservation Virginia’s survey of African American and Rosenwald Schools.
The school was an integral part of the black community during its decades of operation. The school closed in 1964 and was purchased by a group of Black citizens led by Mr. Robert Scales and repurposed as the Pine Grove Community Center and was used as an educational and cultural hub of the rural Black community. The center remained in use until the late 1990s.
However, the spirit of the school lives on in its graduates who have organized the Agee Miller Mayo Dungy (AMMD) Pine Grove Project and work to protect the historic African American school at the heart of the community.
The AMMD Pine Grove Project was born as an extension of the Agee-Miller-Mayo-Dungy Family Association when the family, whose ancestral ties are deeply rooted to this historic school, learned that Pine Grove School was at risk of being sold for delinquent taxes. Within a week family and close friends raised sufficient funds to rescue this irreplaceable historic school. In June 2018, another threat emerged; a mega-landfill was being proposed to be installed adjacent to Pine Grove School. With this information, we added environmental justice to our preservation cause. By late Summer AMMD Family Association had galvanized the community to work
toward preserving our history and protecting our
environment.
Since it’s inception, AMMD Pine Grove Project has connected with organizations and citizens with similar objectives to raise awareness of the the historical significance of the segregated Pine Grove School. The Pine Grove Project has grown into a coalition of former students, concerned citizens, environmental and social justice activists, historic preservation organizations, educational institutions, historians, scientists, authors, educators, attorneys, and, most importantly life long members of the historic Pine Grove Community. The primary objective of the AMMD Pine Grove Project is to protect, restore, and repurpose the historic Rosenwald Pine Grove Elementary School to serve the entire County as a Cultural Center; with particular emphasis on African and Native Americans to Cumberland’s rich history.
