Smithville

Smithville was founded in 1910 and is one of the oldest communities and the largest concentration of African Americans in Cornelius, with roots dating back to the 1880s. Originally called Lemley by freed slaves around 1869, it was renamed Smithville in honor of Jacob L. Smith.

Many of the men in the neighborhood worked as laborers and sharecroppers for Smith. In 1908 Jacob Smith began to parcel out his land to black families, hoping they would create a community where families could live together.

The Smithville community is home to a former Rosenwald School, built in 1922, which served the once thriving, predominantly African American community of Cornelius.

The Rosenwald School Program was established in the early 1900's to improve education for African Americans in the south. Booker T. Washington conceived the idea of a "hands-on self-help" approach to education which he called "industrial education". He teamed with Julius Rosenwald, CEO of Sears, Roebuck and Company to build rural schools for the black community. Together, Washington and Rosenwald were one of the first to utilize the matching grant idea. Rosenwald and the community came up with the cash and the school board agreed to operate the facility.

Approximately 5,350 such schoolhouses were built across 15 southern states. North Carolina had the majority of the structures with more than 800 schools, 26 of which were in Mecklenburg County.

After integration in 1954, the Rosenwald School served as a community center, but it is currently abandoned. After becoming a historical landmark in 2006, the community began looking for new ways to use the school building.

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