University Finds 18th-Century Schoolhouse Where Black Children Learned to Read
The Bray School, which taught Christianity and reading to free and enslaved Black children, was found tucked inside a campus building at William & Mary in Virginia.
An early-1900s photo of the building that once housed the Bray School.Credit.William & Mary
Feb. 26, 2021
For years, academics and researchers at William & Mary, a university in Virginia, had known about the Bray School, where Black children, free and enslaved, were taught to read from 1760 to 1774. But no one had ever found the school.
Until last year, that is. In June, workers tore open the walls of what had been believed to be an early-20th-century building on campus and found timber that had been harvested in 1759.