In March, 1867, twenty African Americans in Rockville pledged to support a school by taking responsibility for money "as may be necessary to pay the board and washing of the teacher and provide fuel and lights for the school-house." In 1872, Montgomery County began to provide public education to African American students, and in 1876 an elementary school at 246 North Washington Street was built for grades one through seven. After the two-room school-house burned in 1919, students moved into the basement of Jerusalem M. E. Church, and the school was rebuilt in 1921 on the opposite side of Washington Street. The Second Rockville Colored School opened in 1921 on the east side of North Washington Street serving grades one through seven, but students seeking further education had to commute by streetcar into Washington D.C. or board with a local family. In the mid-1920's, Noah E. Clarke and other African American parents petitioned for the County's first African American high school, and in 1927 the school board voted to construct one in Rockville. The African American community contributed $6,700 toward construction, matching a grant from the Rosenwald Foundation, whose president and CEO Julius Rosenwald provided matching funds for nearly 5,000 African American schools across the segregated South between 1917 and 1948. Rockville Colored High School stood adjacent to the elementary school on North Washington Street as the County's only high school for African American students, and many students rode for hours by bus to attend until the School Board purchased land in Lincoln Park for the new Lincoln High School in 1934.
