Division Street School
Near Louisville, Indiana
This building was New Albany's school for Black children when the law forbade them from sitting beside white students. In eighteen thirty-one the local school board resolved that colored children would not be admitted, and in eighteen forty-three Indiana made its public schools whites only. Only after the Civil War did the state require education for Black children, and even then in separate schools.
The Division Street School opened in eighteen eighty-five, a one story wooden building with two classrooms and sixty to seventy pupils. Children walked past the white schools every day to reach it. From eighteen eighty-five until nineteen forty-six it was the main source of elementary and high school education for the city's African American community.
After it closed, former students and neighbors formed Friends of Division Street School to save the building. It was restored and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in two thousand two.
