Group's Tour Offers Glimpses Of Area's Ties to Black History
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Sunday, February 3, 2008; Page LZ03
About halfway down Waterford's quaint Second Street lies an empty one-room schoolhouse. On a chilly winter day, the toasty room offers some refuge from the cold. In the 1870s, that luxury didn't exist.
The land was purchased by African Americans in 1868 and remained under private ownership for two years. The school, known as Colored School A, Jefferson District, opened as a Loudoun County public school in 1870 and welcomed students as young as 6.
"It was considered a very fine school for its time," said Karen Radcliffe, a member of the Waterford Foundation.
In honor of Black History Month, representatives from Journey Through Hallowed Ground -- a Waterford-based nonprofit organization that highlights history along the corridor from Gettysburg, Pa., to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello estate -- took members of the news media Thursday on a tour of sites in Loudoun and Fauquier counties that are significant to black history.
The group met at the former Douglass High School in Leesburg, which once served as the only all-black high school in Loudoun and is now the Douglass Community Center. The final stop was the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County in The Plains.
"African American history is often referred to as hidden history," historian and tour guide Deborah Lee said. "Actually, it's very captivating. It's easy to get hooked on black history."
In Waterford, Bronwen Souders and Katherine Radcliffe, members of the Waterford Foundation's educational committee, showed the town's sites and shared stories of the Second Street School.
When the schoolhouse opened as a public school, Waterford was 23 percent black. The town's black population had peaked in 1830.
"There was no street in Waterford where black families did not live, but there were more on some streets than others," Souders said.
The school took students only through the seventh grade, and older students continued their education at Douglass High School.
The Second Street School was used until 1957, when it was closed by the Loudoun School Board. Twenty years later, the Waterford Foundation purchased the building for preservation.
More than 30,000 students have gone through the foundation's Second Street School living history program since 1984. The program is held in the schoolhouse, with volunteers from the foundation posing as teachers from that period.
The program gives third- and fourth-graders from Loudoun and surrounding areas the chance to learn about the lives of black children in the late 1800s. Organizers say students also learn about the realities and limitations faced by black children in such an educational environment.
At the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County, president and co-founder Karen White said she began researching her history and soon realized that it mirrored that of many others.
"You need to know your history," she said. "It's what makes you a person."
