In 1912 Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, established the Rosenwald Fund to assist community construction of public schools for African-American students in the South, helping local communities that raised additional funds. By the 1930's, one in every five rural southern schools for blacks had been built with aid from the fund, for a total of nearly five thousand schools throughout the South. The Hiram Rosenwald School opened in 1930 as the Hiram Colored School. It was the only Rosenwald school in Paulding County and at that time the only African-American school with a library in the county. The school operated from 1930 until 1955.