During the period of segregation, schools for African American children were some of the most important and influential centers of community. Here in the Fredericksburg area, Black education efforts began in the nineteenth century, with clandestine schools held in the homes of local free Black families, enslaved parents secretly reaching their children the basics of reading after long days of forced labor, and free Black people petitioning the Virginia General Assembly to start a school for free Black children in 1838 (which was ultimately rejected, leading to many families choosing to leave Fredericksburg and start new lives in the North and West).

Following the Civil War, the Freedmen’s Bureau was tasked with providing assistance to formerly enslaved people in various forms, including issuing food and clothing, operating hospitals and camps, and supervising labor contracts between planters and freedpeople. The Bureau is perhaps best known for the strides it made in early Black education, establishing thousands of schools across the country, and helping to found essential Black institutions of higher learning, including Howard University in Washington DC, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. Howard is named after Oliver Howard, a Union General who served as the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau from 1865 until 1874.

In Fredericksburg, Local African Americans created (and funded) several institutions dedicated to serving African American students in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including a Shiloh Church School, housed in Shiloh Baptist Church from 1867 through 1874, the Fredericksburg Colored School, opened in 1884, and the Fredericksburg Normal and Industrial Institute, which served high school students starting in 1903. In 1935, the city built its first publicly supported Black high school, the Walker-Grant School, on Gunnery Road.

Named after Joseph Walker and Jason C. Grant, the school honored the contributions of two local leaders in African American education. Joseph Walker was born enslaved in Spotsylvania County on December 17, 1854. After emancipation, he moved to Fredericksburg, where he worked first at a paper mill, then as a butler for a local judge, and finally as sexton of St. George’s Episcopal Church, a position he held for over 50 years. He became deeply invested in Black education in this area and was active in many local political and fraternal organizations.

Jason C. Grant was born in Ontario, Canada, on January 9, 1861. His father had been enslaved in Kentucky, and fled the state when he was 21, settling in Canada. Grant attended the Wilberforce Educational Institute in Ohio before moving to Fredericksburg. He eventually became principal of the Fredericksburg Colored School, retiring in 1924 after working in education for 42 years.

In 1968, when the Fredericksburg school system desegregated, Walker-Grant served as the city’s first integrated middle school. Walker-Grant Middle School moved to a new building in 1988, and the historic building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

This February, the City of Fredericksburg will open a new Wayside Panel honoring the original Walker-Grant School. On February 3rd at 1:30 p.m., the Fredericksburg Area Museum will host a reception celebrating the installation of the new panel, along with four others showcasing diverse histories across the city. Visit famva.com/famevents to learn more.