Brick School
Edgecombe County, Edgecombe County, North Carolina
Marker Inscription
Brick School. Est. for blacks in 1895 through philanthropy of Mrs. Joseph K. Brick; became junior college in 1926. Closed, 1933. Buildings stood here.
Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources
The Story
Established in 1895 through the philanthropy of Mrs. Joseph K. Brick, the Brick School was founded to educate African Americans in an era of rigid segregation and scarce opportunity. It grew into a junior college by 1926 before closing in 1933, and its buildings once stood on this ground.
Why it matters
Schools like Brick were lifelines of Black education in the Jim Crow South, often sustained by private philanthropy where public support was denied.
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Related people
- · Mrs. Joseph K. Brick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Anna Easter Brown 1879–1957
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In 1908 Anna Easter Brown helped found Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first Greek-letter sorority established by and for African American women, born at Howard University as Black students built their own institutions of leadership and service. A history teacher by profession, Brown embodied the era's belief that education and organization were paths to uplift. Her grave lies a quarter mile east.
Dr. L. Julian Haywood
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Born in 1927, Dr. L. Julian Haywood rose through some of the nation's most storied Black institutions of higher learning, earning his undergraduate degree at Virginia's Hampton Institute and his medical degree at Howard University College of Medicine—schools that trained generations of African American leaders during an era of rigid segregation. After service in the U.S. Navy, he joined the medical faculty of Loma Linda University in California and built a distinguished career in academic medicine that reached far from his North Carolina roots. This marker in Warrenton honors a hometown son whose life bridged the Jim Crow South of his youth and the integrated professional world he helped shape, until his death in 2020.
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