WILLIAM STANLEY BEAUMONT BRAITHWAITE SCHOOL

In 1906, Deerfield Beach established Colored School #9 to educate African American children prevented from attending white-only schools in Broward County. A one-room, wooden structure located near NW 1st Avenue, it was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1928. The following year, Colored School #13 was built to take its place. It was one of nearly 5,000 schools funded by the Rosenwald Foundation, a philanthropic endeavor established in 1913 by Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) to fund the construction of Black schools in the South. The school was named ‘Braithwaite School’ to honor the acclaimed Black poet and writer William Stanley Beaumont Braithwaite. The school adopted the motto: “To educate, to elevate, and to cultivate.” In January 1970, as Broward County schools integrated, Deerfield Beach’s only Black school, the Braithwaite School, with its 464 students, was closed by the school board. In 1974, Broward County purchased the property for a health center and office space. After part of the building burned, the former Braithwaite School was demolished. It was replaced by what was known as the Northeast Focal Point and, in October 2022, was renamed the Braithwaite Center for Active Aging.