Educational Sanctuaries

Ateenage Diane Paul poses in her marching band uniform—one leg hitched in the air, her hand perched carefully on her hip—with a wide grin on her face. Captured in black and white in the fall of 1963, the photo hangs among other memories and artifacts displayed in the 1930s school that now houses the Annie E. Colbert/Rosenwald School Museum in Dayton.

“We’re delighted to have this building in our lives,” says Paul, who attended the Annie E. Colbert School from first grade through her high school graduation in 1965. “It really is a source of pride.”

Located about an hour northeast of Houston and named for a local pioneering African American public school teacher, the school was one of about 5,000 Rosenwald schools