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L. A. Williams, A Study of the Public Schools in Orange County, North Carolina (1919).Open the sourceAll sources
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Early twentieth century · 1900–1944
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The 1910 census finds 13 percent of Orange County adults illiterate
Among county residents aged 20 and over, the 1910 census classed 13 percent as unable to read or write, and the 1919 school survey added that the share who could barely read was larger still.
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Eight local school tax districts raise $10,650 for their schools
Special school taxes supplied $10,650 of the county school fund: $4,000 from the Chapel Hill district and $6,650 from seven other local tax districts.
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Forty-one of the county's 78 public schools have a single teacher
Sixteen of the 50 white schools and 25 of the 28 Black schools had one teacher; only one Black school, with four teachers, tried any high school work. The survey named these small, scattered schools as a root problem of the county system.
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Of 5,593 school-age children in Orange County, 4,131 are enrolled
The school census listed 3,639 white and 1,954 Black children aged 6 to 21; 2,844 white and 1,287 Black children enrolled in 1918-19. About one child in four of school age was not on any school roll.
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Only 237 of the county's public school pupils, two of them Black, do high school work
About 5 percent of the 4,131 enrolled pupils were in high school grades: 235 white and 2 Black. Nine schools offered some high school work, only two a full course, and two townships had no school beyond the elementary grades.
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Orange County runs fifty public schools for white children and twenty-eight for Black children
The survey counted 78 county public schools, 50 white and 28 Black, under one superintendent. More than half the schoolhouses stood between a hundred feet and half a mile from a traveled road, and with roads nearly impassable in some months he could not visit each school more than once a year.
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Orange County spends $7.89 per enrolled child on its public schools
The county's school fund from all sources was $44,178.20, or $7.89 a child, about a dollar under the state average; the survey pointed out that most states spent over $25 a pupil. Per pupil actually in daily attendance the cost came to $15.22.
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Orange County's schoolhouses are valued at $110,000, $10,000 of it in Black schools
The survey valued the white schoolhouses at about $100,000 and the Black schoolhouses at about $10,000, not counting sites, which would raise the total past $125,000. The Chapel Hill school alone was worth $35,000, about a third of the whole.
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The survey finds the county's Black teachers better schooled than its white teachers
About a quarter of the white teachers had been to college, a sixth to a normal school, and an eighth no further than grammar school. Two-thirds of the Black teachers had attended college, so on schooling alone the survey judged them the better prepared group.
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The usual public school term in Orange County runs four months and three weeks
Most white and Black schools alike kept school for four months and three weeks a year. The survey urged the county board to lengthen the term as well as raise pay so Orange could hold trained teachers.
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Three Black school districts have no schoolhouse, and two others meet in log houses
Every white district had a schoolhouse, but the 28 Black districts had only 25: two used churches and one had no place at all. The survey judged every Black school building unsatisfactory, worst at Sunnyside, Merritt's, Cedar Grove and Maple Grove, and the first two were log houses.
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White teachers earn a median $50 a month and Black teachers $35
From visits to 46 schools, the survey put the median white teacher's pay at $50 a month and the median Black teacher's at $35, about $166 a year. Once board was paid, it reckoned, a Black teacher had under $3 a month left for clothes, books and doctors, against about $11 for a white teacher.
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White teachers' pay takes $50.50 of every $100 for the schools, Black teachers' pay $15.60
Of each $100 raised for Orange County schools, $50.50 paid white teachers and $15.60 paid Black teachers. Running costs got $4.30 for white schools and $1.60 for Black schools, building and repairs $7.30, and the Hillsboro and Chapel Hill high schools $2.10 each.
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The county board adopts a policy of raising teachers' pay to an average of $75 a month
Shortly before the survey came out, the Orange County Board of Education decided to lift teachers' salaries to a $75 monthly average, half again the white median and more than twice the Black median the survey found.
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The school survey proposes merging small schools around a central high school in each township
The study urged a full reorganization of districts before any new building: small primary schools feeding larger ones, and a well-equipped high school in each township. It named schools that should be merged, among them Oak Grove and White Cross in southern Bingham Township, Breeze and Union Grove at Caldwell, and Chestnut Ridge and Gravelly Hill at Gravelly Hill.
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The university's School of Education publishes a study of the Orange County public schools
At the county Board of Education's request, the School of Education at Chapel Hill surveyed the county's schools through the 1918-19 year, visiting more than 60 percent of them in person, and issued the results as an Extension Series bulletin. The study framed the schools as a business run for the county's families and offered Orange as a typical rural North Carolina county.
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Compiled and maintained by the Friends of the Orange County Public Library from county records, the sources named on each card, and the index’s event pages. Last updated October 4, 2026.
