The Orange City Colored School was the first building in town constructed for the education of African Americans. Before it opened in 1927, various buildings had been adapted for classrooms but were small and poorly lighted. Dr. Frances Dickenson, inspired by her progressive values and the needs of the growing black population, donated five acres of land for the school. Funding came from the Board of Public Instruction of Volusia County and a grant from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, which supplied plans and $1,100 to build the four teacher community school. Associated with what is now Tuskegee University, the Rosenwald program was a major force in rural school design and created models of positive, orderly, and healthy learning environments. Herman L. Nordman built the masonry structure with large banks of windows according to Floor Plan No. 400, and the school became one of four Rosenwald Schools built in Volusia County. The school originally taught first through eighth grade, but the upper grades were discontinued in the 1930’s, and those students who could find transportation attended Orange City School. Its first principal was William King, and early teachers included Marian L. Coleman, Eva King, Henry J. King, Pauline Poole, Turie Thornton Small, T.E. Thornton, Rosa E, Williams, and Louis King. Marian Coleman was educated in Jacksonville and attended Edward Waters College and Bethune-Cookman College, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree. Her pay in the 1930’s was seventy dollars per month, and when she was appointed principal in 1943 she received another ten dollars monthly. In the early 1960’s, the school was renamed the Marian L. Coleman School in her honor. One prominent student, Evelyn Wiggins Sharp, received a Ph.D. from New York University and taught in Volusia County; in 1960 she was appointed an advisor to the Iranian Ministry of Education for the U.S. State Department and worked in Tehran to raise standards of living, literacy, and agricultural practice. After the school closed in 1969, its students were transferred to Deland. The building then served as a community center, reception facility, and church, housed the Marian L. Coleman Head Start program in 1984, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.