History of the Lowndesboro School

History of the Lowndesboro School. . , The Lowndesboro School is among the oldest surviving Reconstruction-era African American schoolhouses in the United States. It was founded in 1867 by Dr. Mansfield Tyler, an educator, minister, and member of the Alabama House of Representatives. With funds secured from the Southern Aid Society in 1868 and the Freedmen's Bureau in 1870, Tyler and other formerly enslaved citizens purchased a building that served as both the First Baptist Church and the Lowndesboro School for its first fifteen years., The Lowndesboro Colored Education Association purchased this site from Tyler and his wife, Amanda to build this two-room pine building in 1883. The school stands as one of the few remaining examples of thousands of Reconstruction-era schools built for African American children and as a testament to the value that newly freed people placed on education to achieve equality, independence, and prosperity., After almost a century as a Lowndes County public school, officials closed the building in 1967 during federal court-ordered integration. In 2011, Lucius and Myrtle K. Evans donated the building to The Elmore Bolling Initiative. Bolling's children attended this school on the day he was lynched in 1947.