L.M. DAVIS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Education was a challenging priority for the African-American community of Limestone Creek. Denied access to Jupiter’s nearby public schools by segregation laws, the community opened its own school in 1905. The “Jupiter Colored School,” first located in the local AME Church, moved to a building on the Louis Moseley Davis homestead in 1915. When the Okeechobee Hurricane destroyed the school building in 1928, Davis donated an acre from his homestead for a new one. Money for the new school came from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, named after and created by the president of Sears, Roebuck & Co in collaboration with Booker T. Washington, which contributed to the construction of over 5,000 African-American schools in the South. With additional funds provided by local residents and Palm Beach County, the county built a two-room school with a kitchen and hired two teachers for grades 1-8. The graduating class of 1941 raised funds to build a sidewalk over the drainage ditch at the school entrance, and a remaining piece with their autographs is preserved in this park. Davis drove older students in a community-built bus to the Industrial High School twenty miles away. The elementary school was renamed after Davis in 1956.