One mile southeast stood Buckingham Training School, the first high school in the county for African American students. In 1919 the Rev. Stephen J. Ellis organized the County-Wide League for School Improvement to persuade the Buckingham County School Board to build a secondary school for black students. When this effort failed, Ellis and his supporters raised $3,000 to match a grant from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, established in 1917 to build schools for black students in the rural South. The four-room high school opened in 1924 with Thomas L. Dabney as principal and served the community until it closed in 1953.