Location: Intersection of Hillsborough St. and W. Park Dr. in Raleigh
County: Wake
Original cast date: 2024
Nathan Carter Newbold, educator, public servant, reformer, and longtime director of the Division of Negro Education in North Carolina was born in Pasquotank County, near Elizabeth City on December 27, 1871. He enrolled at Trinity College (later renamed Duke University) in 1894. He began his public service as a teacher and principal in eastern NC and served as superintendent of schools in Asheboro, Roxboro, and Washington County.
In 1913, Newbold moved to Raleigh and became the state’s first state agent for Negro Education. In this capacity, Newbold undertook the admirable task of expanding educational opportunities for NC Black people at a time when such opportunities were almost nonexistent. He demonstrated great skill in convincing state legislatures and local governments to allocate monies to match foundation grants to build rural schools for Black youth.
In 1917, Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington established the Rosenwald Fund to provide matching grants to build elementary schools for Black communities throughout the rural South. Before the establishment of the Rosenwald Fund, in 1915, Newbold’s enthusiasm for Rosenwald schools led him to take the initiative to contact Julius Rosenwald and arrange for funding for a school to be built in Chowan County. This was one of the first schools to be built outside of the Tuskegee area. Over the years, Newbold and his team worked closely with Julius Rosenwald securing funding for over 843 Rosenwald Schools in NC, more than any other state.
In 1921 Newbold became the Division Director of the newly created Division of Negro Education. According to Newbold in his division report in 1928, the purpose of the Division “….was to aid the State Department of Education to build up the general level of all phases of Negro Education which were at the time and still are very backward as compared with the white schools.” In 1938 he is quoted in a speech to the General Education Board saying it was an attempt to “…reach every Negro child in the entire State in the belief and the hope that the whole mass of the Negro population would be raised to higher levels of intelligence and usefulness.” The new division was responsible for directing the Rosenwald program and other issues related to African-American schooling throughout the state, including supervising the Black state colleges, teacher training programs, and Black high school and elementary education. It worked with numerous philanthropic organizations, including the Slater, Rosenwald, and Jeanes Funds to match state funds and further opportunities for Black youth and educators.
Working quietly and avoiding controversy as much as possible, he acquired a reputation as an effective advocate for Black education. Newbold was committed to hiring Black administrators and colleagues and built one of the largest Black education staffs in the South. Dr. George E. Davis, the first Black professor at Biddle University, came out of retirement to become the Supervisor of Rosenwald Buildings. He traveled across the state leading fundraising efforts from rural Black communities to match the Rosenwald funds. Serving as the state supervisor of Black elementary schools, Annie Wealthy Holland, who later started the Black parent-teacher association in NC, crisscrossed the state organizing meetings, fund drives, and teaching a variety of demonstration classes. According to Thuesen, Newbold understood the importance of having a biracial management team. Whereas white administrators could speak with effectiveness with whites, Black supervisors could “speak with more force and effectiveness to the Negro people (Thuesen).”
Newbold was a founding member of the North Carolina Commission for Interracial Cooperation and served as the director of the Division of Cooperation in Education and Race Relations, a project sponsored by the State Department of Public Education, Duke University, and the University of North Carolina. The purpose of the project was to disseminate information about African American life and history, stressing the positive achievements of southern Blacks. Courses in African American life was taught in colleges and books were purchased for university libraries. Newbold believed that education and race relations were the keys to building a strong North Carolina.
One of the first projects of the Division of Cooperation in Education and Race Relations that was prepared under Newbold was Five North Carolina Negro Educators, published in 1935. This was a biracial collaborative effort that highlighted Simon Green Atkins (Winston-Salem Teachers College), James Benson Dudley (Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro), Annie Wealthy Holland (State Superintendent of Negro Elementary Schools), Peter Weddick Moore (Elizabeth City State Normal School), and Ezekiel Ezra Smith (Fayetteville State Normal School). In the introduction Newbold states the major aims of the book are to “preserve in permanent form the inspiring record of the lives and activities of the five persons; to provide an opportunity for a most helpful cooperative effort by groups of white and Negro college students and faculty members; and to make available some useful, encouraging, and highly informing material for use as supplementary readers in the upper grammar grades and in high school classes in the public schools of the state (Newbold: xii).”
Newbold served as Director of Negro Education for thirty-seven years until he retired in 1950. In a tribute to Dr. Newbold upon his retirement, Mrs. L.B. Yancey and W.L. Greene credited him with the development of high school opportunities for rural colored children, development of standard opportunities for teacher training, provisions for accrediting colleges and high schools for colored youth, financing the program of rural school supervision with the aid of the Jeanes Fund, and securing increased appropriations on both State and local levels for education of colored youth throughout the state.
According to Hugh V. Brown, in A History of the Education of Negroes in North Carolina, “Newbold was the embodiment of Negro education during his career for he truly dedicated his life to the promotion of every phase of the education of colored people. As state agent he steered the activities of the Jeanes Rural School Program; under the Slater Board he set up the county training school system…; as Director of the Division of Negro Education, he set in motion the development and standardization of secondary schools; and through his direction, the normal schools became four-year teachers’ colleges.”
Newbold was a lifelong Democrat. He participated in Harry Truman’s White House Conference on Child Health and Protection and served on several boards of Negro colleges. He died at his home in Raleigh on December 23, 1957, at the age of 85, after having given a full life to work across race and religious lines.
References
Brown, H.V. A History of the Education of Negroes in North Carolina. Irving Swain Press, 1961.
Burns III, A.M. “Newbold, Nathan Carter.” In NCpedia, 1991.
Greene, W.L. and Yancey, Mrs. L.B. Yancey. “Thirty-Seven Years of Progress, A Tribute to Dr. N.C. Newbold”, The North Carolina Teachers Record, pages 2, 16, 1950.
Duke University Archives, Newbold Papers, Durham, NC.
Newbold, N. C. Five North Carolina Negro Educators. University of North Carolina Press, 1939.
Street, Donald. “N.C. Newbold and the Campaign for Negro Public Education.” North Carolina Central University, 1988.
Thuesen, S.C. Greater Than Equal: African American Struggles for Schools and Citizenship in North Carolina, 1919-1965. University of North Carolina Press, 2013.