A foundation has given a $5 million boost to efforts to preserve a colonial-era schoolhouse where enslaved and free Black children were taught in Virginia, officials announced Friday.
The money comes from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The New York-based humanities philanthropy is in the midst of funding similar projects across the country, which aim to promote greater representation of historically forgotten communities.
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WATCH HEREThe Bray School educated hundreds of Black children from 1760 to 1774 in Williamsburg. The College of William & Mary and Colonial Williamsburg are now working together to restore and move the building.
The schoolhouse is believed to be the only remaining Colonial-era building in the country that was dedicated to the education of Black children. Its mission was to impart a Christian education along with a “deeply flawed purpose of directing the enslaved to accept their circumstances as divinely ordained," the university and museum said in a statement.
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SIGN UP Researchers identified the building's frame last year. It's currently tucked inside a contemporary building on William & Mary’s campus. It will be moved a few blocks away to Colonial Williamsburg, which will incorporate the schoolhouse into its public history programming.
The Bray School restoration “will help us tell a more complete story of our nation’s complex history of race, religion and education,” said Cliff Fleet, the museum’s president and CEO.
