Enslaved children were educated here. Now, the public can learn the history.
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The opening of the school comes at a particularly fraught time in the United States as Black history, diversity and established historical narratives are being challenged, sanitized or even erased. Its story also unlocks another layer of the historic city, whose identity is shaped, in part, by its role in the American Revolution. Located in the coastal Tidewater region, Williamsburg was once the capital of the British colony of Virginia. The city is a unique place to examine colonial life — including slavery — and the nation's founding ideals.
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The school's discovery was based on research by Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor professor of English emeritus at William & Mary. It inspired a years-long mission among a broad community of scholars, historians, archaeologists, genealogists, and descendants to learn more about the school and its students. It was rare during the colonial period for a space to be dedicated to formally educating enslaved and free Black children. In 1831, decades after the school had closed, Virginia outlawed the practice.
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'The Bray School is happening around the same time that the fundamental ideas of American identity are being shaped and articulated. The existence of the school tells us that African Americans were a part of the fabric of Williamsburg despite the desire to not see them,' said Maureen Elgersman Lee, director of the William & Mary Bray School Lab. 'The children grew up. They created lives within the system they lived in, whether free or enslaved. They entered this new period, this soon-to-be republic, and they were part of America's story.'
The Williamsburg school was one of five Bray schools in the colonial United States. As many as 400 Black children attended the school beginning in 1760. It moved to a larger facility after five years and closed in 1774 after the death of its only instructor, a white woman named Ann Wager. The existence of the school was known — through documentation and family stories — but it would be centuries before the original building was reclaimed from history.
The first known record of the children, identified by name, is dated 1762. At the time, there were 30 students, ages 3 to 10. Twenty-seven were enslaved. Three were listed as free. They walked to school and attended Bruton Parish Church on Sundays. Around this time, African Americans represented more than half of Williamsburg's population.
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'I always knew there were pieces missing from the story of Blacks here in Williamsburg,' said Janice Canaday, who traces her family to Elisha and Mary Jones, who attended the Bray School in 1762 as free students. Canaday works as Colonial Williamsburg's African American community engagement manager and said she often thought about the children. 'I wonder what songs they sang.' she said, 'Did they go home, wherever home was, and share what they learned? Did they look out the window and somehow see hope?'
Colonial Williamsburg, which re-creates the colonial era through a collection of more than 600 restored or reconstructed buildings and costumed interpreters, is taking steps to more comprehensively tell Black history. On Juneteenth, it is also breaking ground on a project to rebuild the African Baptist Meeting House, the first permanent structure used by the present-day congregation of the First Baptist Church, which was founded in 1776 and is just steps from where the school now sits. And, on the William & Mary campus, archaeologists have begun a formal dig in search of more pieces of Bray's remarkable history.
Collectively, the three projects explore the complicated intersection of race and religion that shaped Williamsburg during the colonial period while also helping create a fuller portrait of enslaved and free Black life there.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which owns and operates the museum, has been accused of both presenting a whitewashed version of the colonial period and of going 'woke' by making the 18th-century storytelling more inclusive.
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'We are going to tell a full story,' said Ron Hurst, chief mission officer for the foundation and its senior vice president of education and historic resources. 'We are going to tell you the good and the bad. We are not going to tell you what to think about it. That's up to you.'
For years, researchers have pored over official correspondence and archival documents related to Bray and have conducted oral interviews to piece together the school's history.
The Bray schools were founded by the Associates of Dr. Bray, an Anglican Church missionary organization, to teach Black children to read and to follow the faith. The girls were also taught needlework.
'It was not exactly an altruistic mission,' Hurst said. 'The intent was to Christianize and particularly imbue the Anglican religion into children of color but at the same time reinforce what was perceived as their place in society. To me, one of the most interesting parts of this story is that once the tool of literacy is freed, you can't put that genie back in the bottle.'
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