Lost for centuries, Virginia school for enslaved children gets new life
The Bray School, believed to be the oldest surviving school for Black children in the country, is expected to open to the public next year at Colonial Williamsburg.


Tonia Cansler Merideth, an oral historian at the William & Mary Bray School Lab, inside the Williamsburg Bray School in Williamsburg, Virginia, last month. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)

By Susan Svrluga
October 30, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — Tonia Cansler Merideth stepped inside the 18th-century building and paused, as if listening. The wide floorboards had been worn down over the centuries, the newel at the base of the stairway smoothed by hundreds of hands. Propped along a wall next to a brick fireplace was a copy of a roster from the 1760s listing, in flowing script, the names of the children who attended the school that year. Three of the children named were free. Twenty-seven were enslaved.


Old photographs of the Bray School alongside a roster of students, most enslaved. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)

“I’m just wishing I could hear their voices,” Merideth said, thinking about what it must have been like back then, with so many young students in a classroom space of just 17 by 14 feet.

The Williamsburg Bray School is expected to be dedicated as a part of Colonial Williamsburg on Friday, 250 years after the school closed on the tumultuous brink of the American Revolution. The building, overlooked for many years in a town fixated on history, is believed to be the country’s oldest surviving school created for Black children. The school is expected to open to the public in the spring when its restoration is complete.


The Williamsburg Bray School is undergoing a restoration, which is expected to be finished in the spring. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post)

It’s a powerful visual symbol revealed at a time when politicians, parents and schools are debating what history needs to be told and remembered, with some states enacting laws and policies that change and limit what schools teach about American history, including slavery.

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By Susan Svrluga
Susan Svrluga is a reporter covering higher education for The Washington Post. Before that, she covered education and local news at The Post. follow on X @SusanSvrluga