At the turn of the 20th century, John Wesley Stewart, an African-American farmer, began lobbying for a school to educate African-American children in the Greenwood community, where children were then taught by itinerant teachers or walked to Tipton County schools. In 1925, the community became part of Shelby County in a boundary shift. In 1927, the family of Paul Barret, a county school board member, sold a tract of family land for the school, and a year later a two-room building opened as Anthony Chapel Elementary School, named for Anthony R. Barret, an early settler of the area and Paul Barret's grandfather. Near this site stood the original brush-arbor Greenwood AME Church, established in 1874, and nearby Greenwood Cemetery contains graves of individuals born before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.