The Southern Improvement Company, formed in 1900 by northern philanthropists and trustees Robert Ogden of Hampton Institute and William Baldwin, Jr., of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, purchased approximately 4,500 acres in Macon County to give black tenants the chance to buy up to 80 acres and become independent farmers. At its height, the company helped more than 65 families buy land, with Hampton Institute treasurer Alexander Purves managing finances and Tuskegee graduate William Chambliss managing the farms. The company supplied farmers with a saw mill, grist mill, cotton gin, blacksmith shop, and brick-making facilities for house foundations and chimneys. This community, also called Purves, Harris Barrett, and The Forties, later became known as Big Hungry as depressed cotton prices, the boll weevil, and poor soil brought economic decline, and the company sold its remaining assets to Chambliss in 1919. In 1904, the company built the two-room Harris Barrett School, named for Harris Barrett, a Hampton Institute graduate and cashier and the company's bookkeeper. Local farmers answered Booker T. Washington's call for education by dedicating proceeds from one acre of their farms to lengthen the school year. At its peak, the Brick School enrolled 200 students in a three-term year of summer, fall, and winter-spring. Its first faculty members were Lottie Greene, wife of the farm manager at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, and Marie Chambliss, sister of the company farm manager. The building also hosted Mothers' Meetings, Tuskegee Institute-sponsored farmers' conferences, agricultural courses, Farmers Institutes, and demonstrations by the Jesup Agricultural Wagon, a George Washington Carver-designed Movable School. The Harris Barrett School continued operating until 1958 and was listed in the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 2006.