The rural school building program began in 1912 as a collaboration between Booker T. Washington, the head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and Rosenwald, one of the institutes trustees and the president of Sears, Roebuck and Company. Washington held that impoverished African Americans could improve economic and social conditions by educating themselves —but at the time, public school facilities for blacks in the rural South were inadequate at best and nonexistent at worst. By providing matching funds to stimulate the construction of safe, sanitary school buildings in rural areas, Washington hoped to improve the state of public education for…

When the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike (Interstate 95)was built parallel to Jefferson Davis Highway, the once-robust travel along the corridor and what comes with it – restaurants, hotels, cabins, dance halls, swimming lakes and a few hoochy-coochy joints – was stolen by the faster more convenient roadway. Gradually, one by one, the attractions and service businesses along the Pike (as it was affectionally known) became strapped for money. The tourist courts were turned into weekly rental but by the late 1990s – early 2000s the ambience of the Pike had been bulldozed under. The Dutch Gap Tourist Court was located at the…