San Domingo School
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San Domingo School | |
 The school building in 2020 | |
  | |
| Location | 11526 Old School Rd., Sharptown, Maryland |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 38°30′39″N 75°43′22″W / 38.51083°N 75.72278°W |
| Area | 1.7 acres (0.69 ha) |
| Built | 1919 |
| Built by | Gravenor, W.D., & Brother |
| Architectural style | Late 19th- 20th Century Revivals |
San Domingo School, also known as Sharptown Colored School and Prince Hall Masons Unity Lodge No. 73, is a historic Rosenwald School building located at Sharptown, Wicomico County, Maryland. It was built in 1919, and is a two-story, rectangular frame building with a hipped roof. It is one of four surviving Rosenwald schools in Wicomico County. The school had only four teachers and remained in use as a school until 1957.[1]
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.[2] It received approval from the National Park Service in 2024 as a candidate to be a National Park Service unit.[3]
The San Domingo Community
The community of San Domingo first appeared in the 1820 census record from Somerset County. At this time, the community had no name; it was only represented by 106 undivided households headed by freed black people.[4] San Domingo is believed to be named after Santo Domingo, a location in the Dominican Republic where the first successful slave revolt took place.[4] The intention of choosing the name San Domingo is unknown, one possibility is that it was meant to act as a warning to those who would wish to harm its members.[4] The community itself was built on land owned by its members, something that was rare in a time when most freed black people lived and worked on land owned by others.[4] San Domingo had its own businesses, church, and school that the members ran making it a self-sufficient community.[5]
Funding
The Black community all over Maryland's Eastern Shore wasn’t given the resources to have an equitable access to education until 1872 when it was legally implemented, even though Freedman’s Bureau was making efforts before this to provide them with some education.[6] The San Domingo school was one of many schools created during the time of Julius Rosenwald’s Fund he created after becoming a partial owner of the Sears, Roebuck Co. With Booker T. Washington. The funding came from the local Black community, Rosenwald, and The Salisbury High school contributing to creating the school in San Domingo.[7]
