The Baltimore Village School in Cramerton, North Carolina, was built in the 1920s to educate African Americans and provide skills to navigate segregation. The school has been closed for quite some time, but a former Cramerton resident stepped in to preserve its history.
The Baltimore Village School sits on a hill near the South Fork Catawba River. Inside the building are cracked windows covered by boards, an old refrigerator on one side of the room, and patches of peeling paint hanging off the roof. The schoolhouse is decaying, but as he walks inside the wooden structure, Fred Glenn says he sees an intact building.
Fred Glenn and his wife, Ernestine Glenn, now live in Charlotte. In 2003, they purchased the school building with plans to renovate it. “We heard that it was going to be burnt down because the city’s fire department was practicing in the building, and after that, they were going to do a control burn,” Glenn said.
Glenn grew up in the area. His mother and aunt attended the school in the 1930s. Glenn didn’t attend the school, but he said the building was the heartbeat of the community as it provided an alternative to places off-limits to African Americans.
“At the time, during segregation, there was no such thing as going to a cinema like AMC or anything like that or any theatre," Glenn said. "So, this became our theatre.”
When it got too hot in the summer, Glenn said a projector would be brought outside the building so people could watch movies on the lawn.
The Baltimore Village School was built by mill owner Stuart Cramer. In addition to a school, it was used for various services such as a place of worship.
By the 1950s, the school was no longer a place of education, but continued to be used as a community center. Glenn said the building was also used for meetings to organize arrangements for the deceased.
“They would make sure they got flowers, and they would have little fish fryers here to raise money to keep the lights on and maintain the building,” Glenn said. “And quilting, they would gather here to quilt, and they had a little band that would come here and practice — so it was everything to us.”
Melvina Booker and her sister, Carlotta Faulkner, live around the corner from the school, which their mother attended. Booker recalls how the school provided support for her family.
“It was a one-room schoolhouse, and it accommodated kids who were 5 years on up,” Booker said. “(Our mother) could bring some of her younger siblings with her to school if my grandmother had something to do.”
Booker also said the school was pivotal in keeping the children in the community safe when they stepped outside of their neighborhood and into the town of Cramerton during segregation.
“The parents and the school provided that protection for us. To teach us what was going on in the outside world." Booker said. “We knew exactly how to interact with everyone — Black or white.”
Now that the building will be preserved, Booker said future generations will be able to understand the school’s impact.
“It’s a special building because it did set the tone for education; it did set the tone for acceptable social interactions,” Booker said. “It’s going to be a history of the people in that building of the people that lived here.”
Dub Sims has been in the area for about 15 years, and says he’s pleased to know someone was dedicated to providing African Americans with the platform to excel.
“At the time where we didn’t have the options, we didn’t have the resources to further ourselves, but to know that someone took the time to make it happen, gives you hope for tomorrow,” Sims said.
Fred Glenn and the Baltimore Village School Board of Directors plan to raise a half-million dollars for the restoration project. So far, they’ve raised about half of their goal. Once they reach their target, Glenn says the money will be used to turn the building into a community center and a museum for people to learn about a critical piece of history in the small town of Cramerton.
