For almost 100 years, the Blakely School (better known as the Little Red Schoolhouse) has played an important part in Baldwin County’s history. After a vote this week from the Baldwin County Commissioners, the county hopes to preserve its legacy for decades to come.

The Blakely School was built in 1920 on Magnolia Church Road in Bromley, primarily due to the leadership of its first teacher and principal Rebecca Burke Tompkins.

Baldwin County historian and storyteller Harriet Outlaw said local residents helped partner with the Rosenwald program in order to raise funds for the construction.

“Julius Rosenwald, the former president of Sears, made it his mission to invest in schools for the children of former slaves,” Outlaw said. “Their program built thousands of schools throughout the South and 14 here in Baldwin County. This is the only one of the 14 that are left.”

The total cost of the new building was $1,600, with $500 coming from Rosenwald and the rest raised by generous community members.

The school served first through eighth grade students until 1950, as the expansion of the Douglasville School in Bay Minette called for the consolidation of smaller schools like Blakely.

The school was abandoned from 1950 until 1979, when it was moved to White House Fork and used a kindergarten classroom for the White House Fork School.

In 1990, when Delta Elementary was built, a group of residents came together to form the Little Red Schoolhouse Foundation, whose mission was to help save the historic structure, move it a new location and furnish it with historic pieces so that it could be used as a destination for field trips to enable children to learn about the history of Baldwin County’s schools.

In 2005, then-Superintendent Faron Hollinger called for a project to help revitalize the structure, and even hired Outlaw to contract with the school system to film a documentary about the county’s historic schools and conduct student field trips to the facility.

Outlaw said she and members of the Retired Teachers’ Association thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the county’s schoolchildren and showing them what life was like in the early 20^th century. The group even won a national award for their work in helping to expose modern children to the realities of early 20^th century school life.

The Little Red Schoolhouse is currently housed behind the Baldwin County Board of Education offices on Hand Avenue in Bay Minette, and while the building has been kept up well, Outlaw and other historical preservationists said moving the building to Bicentennial Park would help bring more recognition to both the structure and the park.

“At the park, you already have the Montpelier Church, the general store and blacksmith shop already on the property, so it would already seem to be a great location for the schoolhouse in terms of creating a historical section of that park,” Outlaw said. “By putting the Schoolhouse there with these other buildings, it would also seem to be a great place to bring students on field trips that would expose them to all sorts of historical buildings and artifacts.”

County Archive Director Felisha Anderson said her department was definitely in favor of the project, and that the BCBE had already voted to approve letting the county take over and move the building.

Commissioners said while they had no problem with wanting to preserve the Schoolhouse and move it out to Bicentennial Park, they were concerned about costs associated with the non-budgeted item.

To that effect, Outlaw said she and others would be happy to undertake a public campaign to try to raise funds for the move and continued upkeep of the Schoolhouse.

“This is a wonderful part of our history that we have already worked hard to preserve, so I would think people would want to continue that legacy of appreciating the wonderful history we have here in Baldwin County,” Outlaw said.

Those looking to help raise money for the project or anyone with questions can contact Anderson at the Baldwin County Archives at 251-580-1897.