Preserving the Past

Group Recognizes Loudoun Area's Contribution to Black History

By Katie DePaola

Friday, February 1, 2008

About halfway down Waterford's quaint Second Street lies an empty one-room schoolhouse. On a chilly winter day, like yesterday, the toasty room offers some refuge from the cold. In 1868, that luxury didn't exist.

The land was purchased by African Americans in 1868 shortly after the Civil War, and remained under private ownership for two years. The school, once referred to as Colored School A, Jefferson District, opened as a Loudoun County public school in 1870 and welcomed students as young as 6 years old.

"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 from Gettysburg, Pa., to Monticello -- guided members of the media Thursday through local sites of importance to black history.



The group met at the former Douglass High School, now Douglass Community Center, which once served as the only all-black high school in Loudoun. Its final stop was the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier County in The Plains.

And in between sites, points of historical interest marked the way.

"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 educational committee, showed the town's sites and shared stories of the one-room Second Street School.

When the schoolhouse opened as a public school, the town of Waterford was 23 percent black -- none of them enslaved, according to the Waterford Foundation. The black population peaked in 1830, but declined in the decades to follow.

"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 was used until 1957, when it was closed by the school board. Twenty years later, the Waterford Foundation purchased the school for preservation.

"We try to keep it pristine," Radcliffe said. "This is the real school."

More than 30,000 students have gone through the foundation's Second Street School Living History Program since 1984. Held in the one-room schoolhouse, the program gives third- and fourth-grade students from Loudoun and surrounding areas the chance to learn about the lives of black children who attended the school in the late 1800s, Radcliffe said.

Volunteers from the foundation pose as teachers from that time period. Organizers said students learn the realities and limitations faced by black children in such an educational environment.

Since the schoolhouse only took students through the seventh grade, older students continued their education at Douglass High School.

The last stop on the tour was the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier, in The Plains. Association president and co-founder Karen White said she began researching her own 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."

For more information about Journey Through Hallowed Ground, including its camps and efforts to highlight the region's history, visit its Web site at www.hallowedground.org.

Your Thoughts...

Results of a county survey indicate 92 percent of Loudoun residents think highly of the county's quality of life. How do you rank it?