It has been more than a decade since academics and researchers began taking a closer look at a small, unremarkable old building on the campus of the College of William & Mary to see if maybe it had a more important story to tell.
Archives were scoured. Centuries-old letters and memoirs were pored over. Archaeological digs were made. Last year, a scientific analysis of the building’s original wood framing nailed down the year of its construction.
With the pieces of the puzzle in place, there was no longer doubt about the building’s identity. Underneath all the coats of paint and interior remodeling and exterior additions was the original Williamsburg Bray School, a school for enslaved and free Black children in Williamsburg that operated from 1760 to 1774. It is, according to William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg Foundation officials, “likely the oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children.”
Indeed, the unassuming campus building has a much more important story to tell, a story of American education, racism, religion, persecution and perseverance. And a story of the more than 400 Black students who were taught during the school’s existence. Now, 261 years after it was built, William & Mary and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation are expected on Thursday to announce plans to bring to the fore its forgotten history and reconnect with voices that had been silenced for centuries.
“The fact that this building dedicated to the education of African-American children has made it through the last two and a half centuries is miraculous,” Ronald L. Hurst, the foundation’s vice president for historic resources, said in an interview. “And it’s an opportunity for us to talk about another whole segment of society at the time of the Revolutionary War that has been more difficult to interpret because their spaces are often not still standing.”
The Williamsburg Bray School Initiative, a joint venture of the university and foundation, will use the site as “a focal point for research, scholarship and dialogue regarding the complicated story of race, religion and education in Williamsburg and in America,” the institutions announced in a statement. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) is scheduled to speak at an event at Colonial Williamsburg commemorating the history and rediscovery of the Bray School on Thursday afternoon. A $400,000 grant from the Gladys and Franklin Clark Foundation will help fund the project.