The original Friendship School, located 0.3 miles east, was funded by J. Rosenwald of Sears and Roebuck ($700), the Black community ($890), and the State of NC. During the Jim Crow Era, the Rosenwald Fund helped build 5,300 schools from MD to TX from 1913 to 1923, at a time when Black educational funding was 1/4 that of Whites. B.T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute contributed the design. Mrs. C.E. Spencer was the main teacher. Inspiring generations of Black youth to pursue an education and obtain a better life, the Friendship School closed in 1954.