The restoration of an early American school for Black children shines a light on the history of education on the continent, and how some students resisted oppression in spite of it.
The Williamsburg Bray School is the oldest-known surviving building where Black children were taught in the U.S. The school opened in 1760 and officially ceased operation in 1774, in that span instructing as many as 400 enslaved and free Black children. At the time, more than half of Williamsburg’s population was Black.
The school was identified using dendrochronology – or tree ring dating of the building’s timber framing – in 2020 on Prince George Street on the campus of the College of William & Mary, where it sat unknown throughout the years. The building was moved in 2023 about two and a half blocks to its current location at Colonial Williamsburg, which is restoring the school to its 18th century look in partnership with the college.
Matthew Webster, executive director of architectural preservation and research at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, said it’s “incredibly rare” to restore a building like this.
“This building is remarkably intact,” he said. “A tremendous amount of it survived, even though it was heavily altered in the 1930s.”
A ceremony officially dedicated the building on Friday, Nov. 1. There, a limited number of guests were allowed a tour of a first-floor room of the school before it closed to finish restoration work. It’s expected to fully open in Spring 2025.
The space open on Friday was unpainted and furnished with simple tables, chairs and benches.
“What you’re seeing [in the school] is all based on evidence,” Webster said. “Furnishing out the room, our curators here at Colonial Williamsburg did a tremendous amount of research into the Bray Associates’ documents – looking at what was being ordered, what was being distributed to the school as well as looking at period precedent for school rooms.”
“They are not concerned with arithmetic”
As the building is brought back into the spotlight, so is the school’s historical legacy. It was created by the Associates of Dr. Bray, at the time the third-largest charity in the Anglican Church.
“They are not concerned with arithmetic,” said Nicole Brown, a William & Mary doctoral candidate who portrays Bray teacher Ann Wager for Colonial Williamsburg. “They are concerned with making an obedient slave using the doctrines of the Church of England.”
Bray students were taught to accept their status in the racist hierarchy. But offering a formal education to people of African descent at all, regardless of its content or the ideals that informed it, was progressive at the time.
And Wager did teach Black students at the Bray School some arithmetic, as well as spelling, prayers and skills like sewing and knitting. Though the bulk of the instruction still ultimately stemmed from a faith-based curriculum that upheld the institution of slavery.
But when studying the school’s records in comparison with advertisements for runaway slaves, Brown was left looking for more explanation.
“The school is being run by a white teacher who’s espousing pro-slavery beliefs, and yet we also see, through runaway ads and other records that I’ve look at, the students resist that aspect of the instruction,” she said. “That was really what compelled me to apply for the position and then continue to try to understand not just Ann Wager, but the students in the classroom. … Her voice can’t be the only one when we’re talking about the Bray School.”
Brown said while the Bray School’s legacy is shaped by its ideals, that legacy also lives in the Black students who went on to resist racism and fight for a better future, including a man named Isaac who may have participated in an anti-slavery uprising.
“What I am seeing across the board with the students I can find is that they are making meaning of their lives through their education, very often in a way that directly contradicts what their textbooks say about them,” she said.
“Almost like rebuilding America.”
Janice Canaday is a descendant of students from the Bray School and works for Colonial Williamsburg as its African American community engagement manager. She called the dedication a “once-in-a-lifetime moment.”
The sentiment was shared by fellow descendant Dennis Frasier Gardner, who traces his lineage to Matthew Ashby – a free, mixed race man who lived in Williamsburg and had children who attended the Bray School.
“I’m glad that somebody now is bringing the story out of exactly what happened in Williamsburg,” he said.
Rex Ellis, the first African American vice president for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, said he had a spiritual moment the morning of the dedication ceremony reflecting on the knowledge passed down by former Bray students.
“You realize how important it is to have a legacy that lives on,” Ellis said. “That sees you from a human being that you are and says to themselves ‘I'm going to respect the knowledge. I'm going to respect what I'm learning. I'm going to respect it all because I represent my family.’”
Virginia Sen. Mamie Locke said that though the Bray School wasn’t informed by the Horace Mann view of public education as the “great equalizer,” it did offer opportunities for free and enslaved Black children in Williamsburg.
“It is a great day to see the restoration of this building that pays tribute to the early education of African American children,” she said. “A building that tells a significant part of African American history, Virginia history and American history.”
John Charles Thomas, the first Black justice on the Virginia Supreme Court, closed the dedication by calling history the source of inspiration. Thomas wondered aloud “what inspiration did we lose all these years” that the Bray School went unidentified.
“By not knowing this story, we might have lost the inspiration that a young Black child along the way would have already known that he had the ability to achieve, to understand, to learn, to be a PhD, to be a rocket scientist, to be anything that the child wanted to be,” Thomas said.
“Now, today, we can start getting it back. We can now build on what was lost. It’s almost like reattaching a limb. It’s almost like taking a thread and putting it back into the tapestry. It’s almost like rebuilding America.”
