Throughout its history, the Bruton Heights School has been a center for education and a bridge between the past and the future. For nearly three decades, it held a place at the heart of Williamsburg's African American Community. Not just a school, it was a community center and a place where people of all generations mingled and passed along traditions and knowledge.
The Bruton Heights School is proud symbol of all that Williamsburg’s African American community achieved in the era right before Civil Rights. Throughout this exhibit, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation salutes this historic school and the accomplishments of its students and teachers.
At right: Portrait of Clara Olivia Byrd Baker (1886-1979). Photo taken by Dan Spangler in 1978.
AFRICAN AMERICAN EDUCATION BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR
Since the earliest days of the Virginia colony, African Americans have placed a high premium on education. Even in slavery, some African Americans learned to read. In fact, colonial laws did not prohibit teaching enslaved persons to read and write. In eighteenth-century Williamsburg, for instance, a small number of white slaveholders provided basic instruction for some enslaved persons. One of the few schools for Black children in colonial America, funded by an English philanthropic organization, operated in town between 1760 and 1774. African Americans apprenticed to local tradespeople learned skills such as carpentry, smithwork, cooking, and dressmaking and also were eligible for instruction in reading and writing - by law a part of apprenticeship agreements. Learning a trade and acquiring literacy gave a number of African Americans skills that enabled them to make better lives for themselves, even as enslaved persons, and to pass this knowledge on to their children. Religious instruction also encouraged African American literacy. Anglican ministers, and later, evangelical preachers, were sometimes moved to teach the skills needed to read the Bible or catechisms. Advertisements for runaways indicated that enslaved persons who could read and write found it easier to pass themselves off as free. As a result, many whites came to regard enslaved literacy as a threat.
Established in the Revolutionary era, today’s Williamsburg First Baptist Church descended from one of the first independent Black churches in America. Led in the early years by the enslaved preacher Moses and the charismatic Gowan Pamphlet, a formerly enslaved person, church membership exceeded seven hundred in 1824 and included enslaved and free African-Americans, many of whom were literate. An 1810 Baptist history noted, “Some of them knowing how to write, a church-book was kept.”
Open from 1760 to 1774, Williamsburg's school for African American children was funded by the Associates of Dr. [Thomas] Bray, an English philanthropic organization allied with the Anglican church. Between twenty-five and thirty children, mostly enslaved and under the age of ten, attended the school each year. Although organizers considered a three-year stint in the school optimal, most students were not allowed by their owners to remain that long.
“She shall teach her Scholars the true Spelling of Words, make them mind their Stops & endeavor to bring them to pronounce & read distinctly. She shall make it her principal Care to teach them to read the Bible, to instruct them in the Principles of Christian religion according to the Doctrine of the Church Catechism to them by some good Exposition, which, together with the catechism, they shall publicly repeat in Church, or elsewhere, so often as the Trustees shall require & shall be frequently examined in School as to their Improvements of every Sort.” - “Rules to be Observed by the Tutoress or Mistress,” The Bray School, c. 1762.
Following the American Revolution, African American Virginians gained their freedom in unprecedented numbers as manumissions increased significantly between 1782 and 1806. Reacting to Gabriel's Rebellion outside Richmond in 1800, Virginia’s legislature stiffened the state’s slave code, increasingly restricting the Black population. To make matters worse, in the wake of Nat Turner’s insurrection in 1831, it became illegal in Virginia to teach African Americans to read and write. Historians estimate that just 5 percent of all southern enslaved persons were literate in 1860.
When Hampton's Mary Peake opened her illegal school for free Black children in 1861, she reported, “I have been teaching about fifty small children. Some are beginning to read very well, and are anxious to learn, also quite a number of adults.”
“If they caught you with a book in your hand, they would whip you.” - Interview with Eliza Baker, a formerly enslaved woman, Williamsburg, 1933
African American Education Following the Civil War
Soon after the Federal army occupation in 1862, Tidewater Virginia became a refuge for African Americans. Throughout the region, families and individuals fled slavery and settled in communities like “Slabtown,” outside of Yorktown, which grew out of a camp established by the Union Army for runaway slaves, or contrabands. Even in the face of resistance by white Virginians, formerly enslaved persons established education as an immediate priority. “They want it and they have a desire to get it,” the blacksmith Alexander Dunlop, a freeman from Williamsburg, testified before the Freedmen’s Commission in 1866.
When questioned in 1866 about his abilities, a Williamsburg freeman retorted, “I can read some, That was not allowed me there.” He claimed that local whites prevented African-American education and “use[d] every exertion to keep teachers from them.”
The town’s first public schools, opened in 1871, included segregated facilities for white and black children. Initially, boys and girls were educated separately at each school.
In 1871 an onlooker observed of James City County, “Great excitement prevail among the colored race. Young and old, little and big, seem eager to obtain knowledge. The colored schools are brimful...On the other hand the white schools are poorly attend and doubtless will not be a success this season."
Local merchant Samuel J. Harris, an African American school board member in the 1880s, supervised the construction of the first Black school, opened on Francis Street in 1885. The Williamsburg School Board designated it "School No. 2" the following year.
Image at left: Public School Building - Williamsburg, Va. 1892 (C1996-271). Gift of James City County Training School Alumni Association.
By 1900, Williamsburg's public schools served some 245 white children and 278 African American children. In 1907, the building was moved to the corner of Nicholson and Botetourt streets, with additional space secured for students in 1920. Black schools subsisted on a shoestring, so parents and teachers subsidized the school themselves, buying supplies and providing maintenance and repairs.
After the School No. 2 on Nicholson Street deteriorated, the school board rented the Odd Fellows Hall, also on Nicholson Street, to hold classes for black students. Clara Bryd Baker remembered, “It wasn't exactly suited [for a school] because it didn't have the things you exactly needed. But we didn't have anywhere else so we had to use that.”
James City County Training School
Beginning 1919, the Williamsburg School Improvement League, formed by parents of African American school-age children, urged building a new school for black students. Called the James City County Training School, the new school was located on Nicholson Street not far from the old School No. 2. It opened in 1924 under the joint operation of the city and county school boards, augmented by support from national foundations and organizations including the Rosenwald Fund, the Slater Fund, and the General Education Board, a Rockefeller charity. The James City County Training School offered its pupils a curriculum that combined vocational training with some academic subjects. The school taught African American students from the first through eleventh grades.
At right: A graduate and his friends look at a yearbook and school newspaper outside James City County Training School, Williamsburg, Virginia. (Albert Durant Photography Collection, DUR-6056)
The James City County Training School emphasized manual training. Boys learned carpentry and agriculture; the girls studied sewing and home economics. Courses such as English, mathematics, science, and social studies helped prospective teachers meet state qualifications; after 1926, students earned high school diplomas.
Image at left: Principal R.L. Rice and Students in the New Auditorium, James City County Training School, 1930s. Photographer: Albert Durant (DUR-5355)
Bruton Heights School
By the 1930s, the James City County Training School needed extensive repairs. Despite pressure from African American parents, the school board delayed any decision about building a new Black school for almost a decade. Citing "the contributions colored people have made to Virginia's historical progress and prestige," the School League claimed the right to improved educational facilities.
In 1938, Williamsburg Restoration administrator Vernon Geddy, Sr., appeared before the school board to affirm Colonial Williamsburg's desire to improve "Negro education and living conditions for Negroes in Williamsburg and James City County." The Rockefeller family, which had a long-standing interest in African American education, helped make a new school a reality. Abby Aldrich Rockefeller led the way by donating $50,000. Together, the Rockefellers, the federal Public Works Administration, the city of Williamsburg, and Colonial Williamsburg provided more than $245,000 to construct a new school. Over the objections of some white residents, construction of the new school began that year at a 30-acre site - another Rockefeller gift - in the area called Bruton Heights. Educators boasted that the school encompassed "the best plan of Negro education which has ever been developed in this country up to the present time." Emphasizing collective problem solving, planners proposed that the school also function as a community center "where people may come together." Classes began in September 1940, and 300 black and white guests attended the dedication of the school on May 25, 1941.
Curriculum and Teachers
The school’s early planner proclaimed Bruton Heights “a laboratory experience of education through doing.” Initially, the Bruton Heights curriculum combined academic subjects with a traditional vocational education. Students cultivated and seeded garden plots and grew produce for the school cafeteria. Others raised poultry in two demonstration brooders houses. Although parents who desired a stronger liberal arts curriculum objected, most embraced the school’s emphasis on “how to do things.” When Bruton Heights opened, it became the first state school to offer students electives in the high school curriculum. By the 1950s, former students remembered, a new emphasis was placed on attending college. In their sophomore year students chose either a diversified occupation D.O. program or, if college bound, the diversified education D.E. program. Many D.O. program students focused on jobs related to institutional service and went on to work at Colonial Williamsburg, which maintained a close relationship with the school. At the urging of Principal D.J. Montague and members of the faculty in 1954, the school board approved the expansion of the college preparatory course to include a foreign language requirement. In spite of economic pressures that forced many Bruton Heights students to leave school before graduation, many graduated and some alumni went on to become neurosurgeons, engineers, lawyers, teachers, and accountants. Although nearly all faculty had college degrees, Bruton Heights teachers for many years earned lower salaries than their white counterparts. Bruton Heights teachers included graduates of Hampton Institute, Virginia State College, Howard University, and other colleges.
At right: Athletic Committee, Bruton Heights School. (Copy photography, WET-41)
Bruton Heights School required male students to take an industrial arts program, which included agriculture. Despite their excellent education, most graduates found few employment opportunities outside the service sector of the local economy.
All girls who attended the school were required to take home economics, which included personal hygiene, health, bedmaking, laundry (including starching and ironing), cleaning, cooking, and sewing. Some male students also took home economics. One student from the class of 1961 remembered that the final exam included the preparation of a complete dinner by a team of girls.
By the mid-1950s, Bruton Heights School had almost one thousand students. Although the school eventually was enlarged, the School Board rented rooms in churches and instituted double sessions to relieve overcrowding.
Celebrations
African Americans in Williamsburg regularly attended events at Bruton Heights, even if they had no children at the school. “Everyone in Williamsburg came to Bruton Heights,” one resident remembers. Some years, commencement exercises attracted so large an audience that the ceremonies were moved outside.
“You were a Brutonian and the important thing that bonds us is that Bruton Heights spirit.”-Anthony Conyers, Class of 1965
Sports constituted an important aspect of life at Bruton Heights. A football team was established after 1947. Male students also played basketball and baseball. Girls’ sports included tennis and a baseball team. “It was a mortal sin to give up,” one of the former football player remembered. Eventually Bruton Heights won several championships, defeating much larger schools with more established teams.
At left: A referee intervening in a play during the Bruton Heights School 1954 Homecoming football game, Williamsburg, Virginia. Photographer: Albert Durant (DUR-1095)
EXTRA CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
“We were so happy and we were so segregated. We didn’t realize that we were. We had the greatest school in Williamsburg...we still mixed and mingled...we were always elevated to this level, that we were the greatest” recalled Edith Kearny Heard, class of 1961.
THE CENTER OF THE COMMUNITY
Three hundred black and white guests attended the dedication of the school on May 25, 1941. “In the fullest sense it represents a community center,” the dedication foreword read, “where people may come together to enrich the person-to-person relationships of pupils, teachers, parents and citizens of the community in solving their common problems.”
Educators considered Bruton Heights a model school and praised its effect on the local Black community. Former students proudly remember Bruton Height’s emphasis on community service. In the first two years, for instance, male students screened windows in about 75 houses, provided “sanitary toilets” for others and painted more than 25 building exteriors. Other Bruton Heights School projects promoted community beautification.
At right: Students with display board titled "A Good Citizen is the Well-Informed Citizen," possibly at Bruton Heights School, Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1950s. (Image WET-37)
At Bruton Heights, the community had access to a clinic with a full-time nurse, a library, work-shops a gymnasium, night classes for adults, and space for meetings and other recreational activities. Operating at a time when few facilities welcomed African Americans, Bruton Heights engendered a strong sense of ownership and pride among students, their parents, and the community at large. “It is our responsibility” one parent remarked at a school meeting. “The teachers will leave. But we live here.”
During World War II, Bruton Heights served as a USO facility for Black sailors at Camp Peary and Black soldiers at Fort Eustis. The first dance in March 1943 attracted 100 sailors.
The growing size of the USO program nearly overwhelmed educational functions at Bruton Heights. In August 1944, for instance, some ten thousand people attended USO activities at the school. By the end of the war, USO operations had moved to Fort Eustis.
At left: Couples dancing at the Bruton Heights USO, a segregated recreational facility for African American soldiers located in Williamsburg, Virginia, circa 1943. Photo by Albert Durant (DUR-5356)
Equality of Education is a Family Affair
More than a decade after the momentous 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Bruton Heights School integrated. In 1958, members of the Yorktown chapter of the NAACP filed an unsuccessful petition with the Virginia Department of Education in an attempt to integrate local schools. The Williamsburg school board took “a wait and see” attitude. Just two Black students, Stanley Tylor and Jamie Bryd, integrated the white James Blair High School in 1965. Bruton Heights’ other high school students (grades 8-12) moved to Berkeley High School in January 1966. Berkeley remained all-Black until 1968 when Black and white high schoolers attended classes together at James Blair. In September 1968, Bruton Heights became an integrated grammar school. While recognizing that integration brought “equality of education” to all Williamsburg's school age children, local African-Americans continued to mourn the loss of Bruton Heights. Without the school, residents felt that the influence of Black teachers and principals declined, and educational facilitated ceased to be an important force for imparting community values. Long after integration, a resident commented sadly, “We lost a piece of ourselves.”
“But integration in Williamsburg was very good, I mean you didn't hear of any upheavals. Of course there was some dissatisfaction with both groups but no upheavals. No fighting on the buses.” - Clara Byrd Baker, 1978
Although forced to finish the 1965-1966 school year at Berkeley High School, the class of 1966 secured special permission from the school board to receive diplomas marked “Bruton Heights."
At right: Bruton Heights School students arriving at Berkeley High School in 1966. (Copy photography, WET-11)
This digital exhibit is drawn from the physical exhibit in the lobby of the Bruton Heights School building at 301 1st Street in Williamsburg. To see more materials in Colonial Williamsburg's collections related to the school, check out our online Digital Collections.
Bruton Heights, our love doth grow,
We love thee more than words can show,
As time goes by and we disappear
Our hearts will always fill with cheer,
Whenever we think of Bruton Heights,
Dear old Bruton Heights.
Our colors of maroon and gold;
Will always stand so true and bold,
For knowledge and the way of truth
Will always linger with our youth.
So, live and learn at Bruton Heights,
Dear old Bruton Heights.
Bruton Heights, Bruton Heights
Ours to you is loyalty.
Bruton Heights, Bruton Heights
This we sing to thee.
By William A. Scales (Music), David Summers, (Words)
Credits:
Copyright The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation