Preserving Warren County Training School

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Text by Michael E.C. Gery | Photos by Duane Salstrand

The Legacy

Warren County Training School has its roots here in the countryside near the Virginia border. There was the Flat Rock elementary school of the early 1900s, then the Wise Colored School known as the Yellow School in the Wise community. After the Yellow School burned, the Julius Rosenwald Fund helped the community build what became Warren County Training School in 1921. Mr. Rosenwald was a Chicago philanthropist and president of Sears, Roebuck and Co. The Rosenwald Fund in that era supported hundreds of schools for black communities. The first Rosenwald school here was destroyed in a 1931 tornado. Later that year, the fund helped erect the brick building that remains today.

Gillis E. Cheek led the effort to build the school and was its principal. Known as ‘Fesser Cheek, he was a Baptist minister and tireless advocate for civil rights. He reached out to families far and wide to bring children to remote north Warren County to be educated. Students lived with the Cheek family, with local families and in separate girls and boys dormitories on the school’s grounds. He supervised the school farm and canning operation that produced food for lunches and suppers. “He was strict, but the children loved him,” said Elizabeth Baskerville (‘36), who remembers him. He was known not to compromise when it came to granting blacks equal standing with their white neighbors. His work in promoting voting privileges caused him to lose his job at the school in 1941.

The Rev. George Haywood Washington succeeded ‘Fesser Cheek and was responsible over the next 27 years for molding the character of countless men and women who would go on to become leaders and professionals throughout the nation and the world. “Pops” Washington was ever-present. You could not escape his watchful eye. You knew immediately not only when you stepped out of line but also why you did. And you learned right away that you’d not step out of line again. It was a time when black schools had to be self-sufficient, to supplement whatever support they received from the county system. They sold candy to raise money to hire a new teacher. They used donated vehicles, donated musical instruments, donated costumes for theater performances.

“Society and government set a separate cultural and educational agenda for these schools,” says Larry Sledge. “The schools had to come up with their own resources. And they did.”

They did because of devoted visionaries like G.H. Washington. At a time when the segregated black schools had no transportation and relied on used textbooks discarded by the white schools, Mr. Washington attracted devoted teachers and succeeded in constructing a new agriculture building, a cafeteria and a new elementary school with 17 teachers.

Like many school systems, Warren County’s moved slowly to integrate the schools in the mid-1960s. After Doris Terry Williams’ class graduated in 1969, the system closed what was by then called North Warren High School, and the students were assigned to what had been all-white schools. “Then there were no black schools at all,” Ms. Williams says. “Those schools had been the center of the community. Then all of a sudden the black communities lost them and their leaders as well. They didn’t have their coaches. The principals became assistant principals in charge of discipline at what had had been the white schools.” An atmosphere of fear had replaced one of encouragement, fellowship and inspiration.

The main aim of the Warren County Training School’s alumni is to restore the level of encouragement, fellowship and inspiration that had been instilled in them as students. Restoring the building and grounds is a means of keeping them focused on the goal.