Randolph County Training School was chartered on September 15, 1919, as a public school for African Americans and opened in the fall of 1920 with 73 students. Its original two-story wood building was constructed with contributions from black parents and community leaders and the local white community, with seed money from the Rosenwald Fund, which also supported nearly 5,000 other schools for African Americans in the South between 1912 and 1932. After the original building burned in 1943, it was replaced in 1948 by a masonry building that remained in use until the school closed in 1970 under a federal court desegregation order. During its 51-year history, its dedicated staff provided a solid education to thousands of students despite separate and unequal circumstances, and the school served as the nucleus of many social, civic, and educational activities in the black community.