WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — A building believed to be the oldest surviving schoolhouse for Black children in the U.S. is being moved into Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.
The original structure was built 25 years before the American Revolution, near the college campus of William & Mary.
Most of its students were enslaved.
Hundreds of people lined the streets Friday to watch its slow-speed journey into the colonial city, which serves as a living history museum of the late 1700s.
Historians say the Bray School contradicts the belief that all enslaved Americans were uneducated.
Its faith-based curriculum justified slavery but also spoke of liberty, an empowering and perhaps even subversive idea at the time.
