After Emancipation, education was a key pathway to economic prosperity for African Americans, but funding was often scarce and public money for black education was marked by significant disparities. Inspired by Booker T. Washington, Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., provided financial assistance to build school facilities for African American students, and from 1920 to 1932 the Rosenwald Foundation helped build 5,357 schools across the South, including more than 500 in Texas. Hopewell Rosenwald School was built on Bastrop County land that had belonged to Martin and Sophia McDonald, who had been enslaved as children. After purchasing 83 acres in 1876 and building a successful farm that had expanded to 1,100 acres by 1906, they promoted land ownership and education. In 1919, the McDonald estate deeded one-and-a-half acres and a monetary grant for a church and school serving the Hopewell community. Completed in 1921, the school was funded through public money, funds raised by the African American community, and a Rosenwald grant. Artelia McDonald Brown, daughter of Martin and Sophia, was the first teacher. First an elementary school and later reclassified as a one-year and then two-year high school, the frame building had a gable roof with exposed rafter ends, wood siding, and large multi-pane windows. Hopewell School served the community until the late 1950s, when public school reorganization and integration made Rosenwald schools obsolete, after having stood at the center of the community's educational, cultural, and social life.