Free Hill Community & School

The Free Hill Community Center was formerly the Free Hill Rosenwald School. The "School House", as it was affectionately known is located at 1440 Free Hill Road, in Celina, Clay County, Tennessee. In 1919, Sears Roebuck & Company established a rural school building program through the Rosenwald fund to build African American schools. In 1929 - 1930 the community with the aid of the Julius Rosenwald fund, a grant program guided by Booker T. Washington, built a school to educate their children on the land donated by several families. This was the only Rosenwald building in Clay County. The school was closed in 1966 when segregation officially ended. The Rosenwald School of the Free Hills community in Clay County, Tennessee was but one of 354 schools built in the state, with only about 30 still standing. In the year 2000 the National Trust placed these schools on its list of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.