The school was initially funded by a land grant of 1.5 acres and a monetary grant from Martin and Sophia MacDonald of Bastrop County, who were enslaved as children. The school was also paid for through public funds, money raised from the African American community, and a monetary grant from the Rosenwald Fund. The school opened in 1922 and closed in the late 1950s, when the United States Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education found that state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional, rendering the school obsolete.
Restoration
After the school closed, the building fell into disrepair. In 2015, Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative awarded a $50,000 capital grant to the Hopewell Rosenwald School Project to help convert the building into a community center. The project to restore the school was under the fiscal umbrella of American YouthWorks[2]
