Morris Booker Memorial College

City/Town: Dermott
Location Class: School
Year Built: 1929
Year Abandoned: 2005
Status: AbandonedEndangeredNational Register of Historic Places
Photographer: Ginger BeckZach Griffith

Morriss Booker Memorial College has a dual history. Before its final name, the college was The Chicot County Training School in Dermott. The single story building was built in 1929 by funding from the Rosenwald* Fund, a major philanthropic effort to improve educational opportunities for African-Americans. It is similar to other schools of the period, with banks of windows providing plentiful light to its seven classrooms. Sometime in the 1940s an auditorium was added to the west side. The building was the second built for the training school with Rosenwald support; the first, a four-room building, was built in 1924 but has not survived.

Samuel Kountz, a student at Morris Booker College, became the first black student to enter the School of Medicine of the University of Arkansas and was a pioneer in organ transplant surgery.

The school building is significant as the only surviving Rosenwald-funded school in Chicot County. Its design was based on standard plans developed by Samuel Smith, an agent for the Rosenwald Fund who developed a plan book for various configurations of school buildings, to be used in the fund’s work without necessitating the need for an architect for each facility built. The design incorporated an “industrial” room, in which trades could be taught, and the building was sited according to Rosenwald recommendations for the best use of natural lighting. The building served as a public school facility until 1975, after which it was sold to Morris-Booker Memorial College, which was in 2004 using it as a Head Start facility.


While the original Rosenwald building and nearby library building are both in extreme states of decay, the larger and newer gymnasiujm

Julius Rosenwald

*Julius Rosenwald – one of the most significant figures in Southern black education. A successful businessman, Rosenwald’s philantrhopy is much more well known than his financial success. He worked to provide grants to build schools for African Americans across the South, including Arkansas, and he contributed greatly to the creation of better educational opportunities for Arkansas’s African-American population. Established in 1917, the Julius Rosenwald Fund brought more money for the benefit of black education than any previous philanthropic undertaking. It was aimed  at creating more equitable opportunities for African Americans in the South.






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  8. so sad to read the college has become abandoned. I understand technologies are being developed rapidly, but I don't believe we don't need colleges already. it can be true for the digital area, but there are so many specialities are relevant today, just like educational communities with their own places

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