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Abstract
The Franklinton Center at Bricks, located in Edgecombe County in eastern North Carolina, has had its share of reinventions. From antebellum plantation to an agricultural, industrial, and normal school for rural African Americans to a rural life school and farming cooperative, this site continually adapted its landscape and associated structures as dictated by necessity. Few of the structures associated with the sites life as a school for rural African Americans remain, but the ways in which the landscape was altered to facilitate the schools needs remain readily apparent. This thesis explores the roles of institutions occupying the site over time as related to African American education during the Jim Crow-era Southeast, the work of the American Missionary Association, cooperative farming, and the Civil Rights movement. Further, it addresses how these roles can influence future cultural landscape conservation and development at Bricks.