Lesson 6: The Daily Experience of the Laurel Grove School, 1925

In 2002, Marguerite Giles Williams reflected on her years at Laurel Grove “Colored” School in Fairfax County, Virginia.  She declared, “I liked to learn and I loved all subjects.”  Williams attended the one-room schoolhouse from 1925 to 1932.  She walked ten miles daily to join her classmates of varying ages and grades.  Together they worked in small confines, shared books and desks, made do without dictionaries, and studied geography without maps.  Though they lacked many essentials, they still learned to read, write, add, and subtract.  Williams was not alone in her enthusiasm.  Winnie Walker Spencer explained that had it not been for Laurel Grove School—which sat on land that was donated by her grandfather William Jasper—she and her siblings would have been without an education.  Instead, she proudly stated, the school’s motto proclaimed, “Get an Education and Everything Will Fall in Line.”

By the 1920s, Laurel Grove School teachers had taught children reading and writing for forty years.  Though the school remained a one-room building, the public school system now stood on firmer ground.  Students, ranging from first to seventh grades, advanced independently.  They shared books and older students helped younger ones.  A school day was five and one-half hours and the teachers were paid on a basis of a 20-day school month.  Since 1918, when Virginia passed the first compulsory attendance law, children aged eight to twelve were required to attend school for at least sixteen weeks.

Laurel Grove and other Fairfax County students benefited from these and other state requirements.  In 1920, the county, ranked first in the state with a 96 percent literacy rate.  Still, discrimination against black students was the rule.  In 1920, the county spent more than double for a white child’s education than a black child’s.  It gave white teachers fewer students per class than black teachers and paid white teachers almost twice as much.  Mid-decade, the Fairfax County School Board mandated that all schools close on the same date, but this did not mean that all schools operated for an equal number of days.  White schools conducted sessions for 160 days and black schools 140 days.  In addition, no black child could obtain a high school education in Fairfax County.  While secondary curriculum was available in the county since 1907 (one year after the state passed a secondary education law), the schools admitted only white students.  The first high school was opened in Clifton, and by 1912, its students moved into a new school building with six classrooms, a library, and an assembly hall.  Other towns followed, including Herndon, which built a new $10,000 high school around 1911.  By 1924, the school had an athletic director, two basketball and two tennis courts, a baseball diamond, and a 220-yard track.  In 1925, the school developed a business curriculum.

Despite this discrimination, former Laurel Grove students, such as Winnie Walker Spencer and Marguerite Giles Williams, recalled their school days with nostalgia.  To get to school, they walked through pastures and along country roads.  Williams made the five-mile trek from her family’s farm.  She left home with her two sisters at 7:30 a.m., met fellow classmate Lily Jenkins along the way, and arrived at school an hour and a half later.  By that time, fellow student Dan Baker had the fire lit and other children, including descendants of Jasper and Carroll, would be fulfilling other duties.  Each had chores.  Some pumped drinking water from the well; others stoked the stove with firewood and straightened the room.  During winter, they hung their coats on nails and warmed themselves by the pot-bellied stove.

School began at 9:00 a.m. with devotions and the pledge of allegiance.  R. L. Carrington, Lula P. Bueckner, Alma Walker (another Jasper descendant), and other teachers taught their pupils reading, writing, math, geography, history and spelling.  “We had good teachers,” Spencer reminisced, “They gave us a good basis.  If we misspelled a word, we had to rewrite it fifty times.”  For music lessons, the teacher played the piano and the children sang.  For lunch, students ate food from home.  Marguerite’s grandmother sent bread and butter sandwiches.  Sometimes the children brought garden vegetables and the teacher cooked a pot of stew.  At recess, they enjoyed sports.  “We were ball players,” Mamie Lightfoot said.  When they struck up a game, boys who could not attend school regularly because their parents needed their labor on the farm joined them.

Laurel Grove students did not work solely on academic lessons.  Spencer recollected sewing samplers, and the County’s “Colored Industrial” teacher Mrs. C.W. Patterson tutored students in other skills, too.   In doing so, Patterson followed the dictates of the state supervisor of rural black elementary schools who advocated lessons in basket making, carpentry, cooking, chair caning, sewing, and shoe repair.   Giving time to such activities placed Laurel Grove on par with other black schools in the south and positioned it within ongoing debates about what black schoolchildren should learn and who should decide. 

In the still rural Fairfax of the 1920s, teachers at white schools also wove industrial and agricultural lessons into their curriculum.  But the agenda was different for African-American students.   Exposing his era’s racial assumptions, one northern philanthropist made clear the reason.  He argued that black persons “will willingly fill the more menial positions, and do the heavy work, at less wages.”  This would leave whites “the more expert labor.”  His recommendations to African Americans included:  “Avoid social questions; leave politics alone; continue to be patient; live moral lives; live simply; learn to work.”  Not all northern philanthropists agreed.  Some hoped to dismantle white supremacy and viewed education as a tool for social change.   Many more, however, took the course of Rockefeller’s General Education Fund and promoted industrial education.  The Peabody and Slater Foundations did more than promote; they withheld support if black schools did not teach industrial skills.

Southern segregationists, intent on keeping black people in subservient roles, sided with the extremists.  The Fairfax Herald mocked any “ambition to make classical scholars . . . of the negro race.”  If blacks were provided books, the editors questioned, who would do “the hewing of the wood, the drawing of the water, and the hoeing of corn.”  Not surprisingly, African Americans scorned such messages.   They argued that they sent their children to school for intellectual development and a chance to progress, not to learn skills that would keep them beholden to whites.  At least one Virginia teacher reported that if parents heard that industrial lessons were planned, they would keep their children at home.

The contest between academic and industrial education was not settled within the black community, however, as demonstrated by the debate between two prominent African-Americans who adopted different strategies to promote progress and equality.  Former Virginia slave Booker T. Washington embraced industrial education and a message of hard work, discipline, morality, and service.  To move forward, African Americans must accept segregation, avoid political confrontations, work diligently, and gain economic independence.  This, he contended, would win white approval.  To gain essential skills, Washington called for training in agriculture, domestics, and industrial labor.  He started Tuskegee Institute to provide such a forum and encouraged his students to master a trade.   W. E. B. DuBois—the first black person to gain a doctorate from Harvard University, founder of the Niagara Movement, leader of the NAACP, and writer for the NAACP newspaper The Crisis—countered Washington’s conciliatory views.  Instead, he argued that black people should not bow to segregation but should fight for civil and political rights.  He championed African-American rights to higher education and pushed for the development of a talented leadership—the “talented tenth”—to overcome discrimination.

Disputes between Washington and DuBois blurred on the local level.  While some children stayed home when industrial lessons were taught, others opted to can vegetables and cane chairs.  In practice, teachers taught both academic and industrial subjects and children learned to read, write, sew, and saw.  One of the places that showcased both was the county fair.  At separate venues, black and white children displayed their achievements in the midst of great excitement and fanfare.  During the first decades of the twentieth century, Fairfax County white fairs featured “a brass band, balloon ascensions, comic knife throwing, high-wire walking, health demonstrations, an automobile parade, precision drills, parachute drops, moving pictures, Punch and Judy shows. . . and the prize-winning produce and livestock of the county’s farmers and future farmers.”  Reports of the “Colored” Fairs were similar, featuring in 1914, “a full complement of side shows, including the merry-go-round, pony rides and a splendid drill by the uniformed ranks of colored Odd Fellows accompanied by a band of music which discoursed excellent pieces.  The exhibits of agricultural produce, of domestic handiwork, fruits and preserves, horses, ponies and cattle, made splendid showing.”

Fairs fostered school pride, as students created school banners and marched in parades.  To generate competition and rally community support, the School Board gave schools a holiday and paid teachers to attend fairs with their classes.  “One of the high points while at Fairfax was ‘school day’ at the County Fair.  We always had a frantic time training children to march in the parade which was composed of all schools in the county, led by the county officials and each teacher was expected to march at the head of her class,” recalled white schoolteacher Lillian Millan, “We also spent a good deal of time and effort preparing an exhibit as there was a special building for the schools and lots of competition from all over the county.”  In 1914, not long after the organization of the Fairfax County Colored Fair, County School Superintendent Milton Hall encouraged school participation by appointing an industrial teacher for Mount Vernon District to “teach the children handicrafts for the Fair.”  Gunston School student Gladys Bushrod recalled that an industrial teacher helped students make items for the Fair.  And she remembered that every year the schoolchildren would go to the fair together, leaving Mason Neck at 4:00 a.m. in a horse-drawn wagon.  Georgiana Jasper Walker supported the Fairfax County Colored Fair monetarily and her children and other students at Laurel Grove remembered the events and competitions.  Some recalled winning ribbons. 

“Colored Fair Association” programs from 1916 and 1924 indicate that students could enter a variety of industrial and academic competitions for cash prizes.  Contests in the domestic arts called for baskets, hats, photograph frames, embroidered and crocheted items.  Agricultural exhibits featured garden vegetables, canned fruits, and poultry and livestock.  Contestants vied for prizes of up to five dollars.  To demonstrate their academic proficiency, students wrote essays on “What Good Roads will Mean to Virginia” or created a “Map of Fairfax County locating the Colored Public Schools and Fair Grounds.”  Others submitted an illustrated poem, a list of words most often misspelled, an illustrated paper on simple fractions, or a sample of their best penmanship.  Winners earned between twenty-five cents and one dollar.

Contest categories revealed local concerns about transportation and scholarly concerns about spelling and mathematics.  Most hinted at what was being taught in both black and white schools.  At least one essay on “The House Fly and the Importance of Its Extermination” signaled public health concerns that became a national priority during the Progressive Era.  This attention to health at the county fair bolstered other health campaigns in the schools.  The flu epidemic of 1918 heightened the need to educate school children about the importance of cleanliness and sanitation.  In 1919, the Chairman of the Red Cross, R. Walton Moore, started a new public health program that included talks in schools on sanitary toilets, dental dispensaries, and parasite detection.   One of the health campaigns that Laurel Grove participated in was a 1927 contest for “colored schools of the county” over “which sold the largest number of tuberculosis seals.”  Laurel Grove came in second in the small schools division and was awarded $2.50.

Some literary contests listed in the 1922 “Colored Fair” program targeted African-American concerns and signaled that black educators taught American literature and history courses that included more than Longfellow and Washington.  One dollar went to the best prose interpretation of a Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem.  Fair officials awarded another dollar for the best essay on “The Life and Works of Harriett Tubman.” These contests indicate that Fairfax’s black schools retained some control over the curriculum, functioned as a place for instilling racial pride.  These also points to one likely reason why students years later recalled their time at Laurel Grove with such fondness.

Students explained that their nostalgia for the school was largely because of the warm communal spirit they felt as members of an all-black school.  It offered refuge from the Jim Crow world that continually told black children that they were inferior.  Segregated fairs did the same.  Though celebratory events, county fairs bore the marks of a segregated and racist society.  Certainly, this was evident by the fact that they were separated based on race.  It was also written into the Dunbar and Tubman contests.  More pointedly, the KKK played a strong role in the white fair, even serving as the “drawing cards,” according to county agent Harry B. Derr.  Not surprising, as the KKK hosted ceremonies, brought in the Klan band, gave away gold, and shot off fireworks at the fairs’ “Klan Days.”  In 1924, Klansmen came in automobiles and executed the rites of their order in front of an electric cross.  Thousands flocked to watch and celebrate.
   
During the 1920s, Jim Crow segregation marked every black child’s school experience across the south.  This held true in the separation of schoolhouses and county fairs as well as in the careful demarcation of space that defined everyday public life.  For each child, the lessons at times were obvious.  One man reported that the first few days of every school year were spent erasing the slurs that white children wrote in textbooks that they knew would be handed down to their peers in black schools.  Few certainly could miss verbal taunts and visual cues that marked segregationist attitudes.  Neither could they easily miss the KKK displays of racial hatred.  In 1924, the Fairfax Herald reported that “members of the Ku Klux Klan from Fairfax and Herndon’ joined other klansmen from the capital area for another ‘spectacular initiation on a hill above Rosslyn.”  The newspaper stated that ‘the light from the cross and from the candles carried by the klansmen were plainly visible from Washington and the surrounding country.”  E.B. Henderson, because of work as an educator and NAACP leader, received so many angry phone calls that he had his number unlisted.  One letter to him, signed by the Klan, threatened that they would wake him, “and after you have been gagged, you will be born to a tree nearby, tied, stripped and given thirty lashes on your ETHIOPIAN back.”

Laurel Grove residents did not report threatening phone calls or letters such as the ones that E.B. Henderson received, escaping, according to oral accounts, much of the racial strife that other parts of Fairfax County experienced.  Students also expressed some contentment with their small space.  Though a white school was within two to three miles of the Giles’ farm, Marguerite and her sisters still walked ten miles each day to attend Laurel Grove.  Years later, she said that she had no idea how the white Pohick school differed from hers, but, she reported, she did not feel deprived.  Since she did not know what the white children had, she said there was nothing to miss.  For the former students who looked back at their days at Laurel Grove in the 1920s, the little community school offered a warm space of friendship and harmony.

In 1929, when Wilbert Woodson became the county school superintendent, there were 64 schools, 30 of which contained but one room.  Many still did not have plumbing.  Enrollment stood at 4,742.  Teachers numbered 168 and drew an average yearly salary of $779.  During the 1930s, school buildings continued to tell the story of discrimination.  Most black schools remained tiny.  Laurel Grove, valued at $600, had not changed.  The exception was Gum Springs.  To accommodate its eighty students, the community built a larger school in 1907 and four teachers staffed the building that was worth $4,900.  Still, the school fell far short of neighboring high schools:  Woodlawn was worth $44,000; Mount Vernon $93,000, and Fairfax $185,000.  Annual per capita expenditure for whites was still double that of blacks.

To improve instruction and give more students access to better facilities, Superintendent Woodson consolidated the elementary schools.  By action of a special meeting of the School Board in 1932, Williams and six other students were the last to attend Laurel Grove.  According to the district’s black supervisor, the student number had decreased because families, drawn by the promise of a better living in Alexandria and Washington, were moving out of the community.  Now, the children who remained had to travel to Gum Springs for lessons.  The School Board denied entreaties for public transportation.

“Get an education and everything will fall in line.”  For many Laurel Grove students, education made a difference.  But, it did not guarantee success.  Many still faced jobs of menial status in agriculture or on the railroad.  Williams, who completed seventh grade in 1932, wanted to continue her education, but her father had neither the money nor the transportation to help her.  So she worked as a domestic for two dollars per week.  For those dollars, she cleaned, washed and did “just about everything.”  She had every other Sunday off.  For a short time, she attended night classes, but this was a difficult schedule to keep and since she needed the money, work won over school.  At 60 though, she earned her GED. 

For those who had the financial means to go to high school, few possibilities existed.  Black students still had no county high school to attend and travel to Manassas Industrial School in neighboring Prince William County or to Dunbar, Phelps Vocational Center, Cardozo, or Armstrong in Washington, D.C. was difficult.  Not until 1954—the same year that the United States Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional—did Fairfax County build a high school for its black students.  Luther P. Jackson High School opened many years after white students had access to neighborhood high schools and long after E. B. Henderson formed a chapter of the NAACP and started agitating for improved educational opportunities for African Americans.  The school serviced the entire county until 1965, when desegregation was finally instituted in Virginia.

For most students, Laurel Grove School provided their only educational opportunity.  Jasper’s family proved the exception.  At least four of his grandchildren continued their education in Washington and became teachers.  Winnie and her sister, Geneva, stayed with relatives to gain access to Armstrong H.S.  Then they went to St. Paul Normal and Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia, graduating in 1934.  They returned to Fairfax County and taught for several decades.  Eventually both obtained their Masters in New York City.  Winnie Spencer continued to share Laurel Grove’s motto with her students, and she proudly reported that one of her students, whose parents were illiterate and impoverished, became a college president.

Today, interested individuals can see the schoolhouse as it likely existed in the 1920s.  In 1999, the Laurel Grove School Association refurbished the building and established it as a stop on the African-American Heritage Trail.  It stands as a monument to a group of determined individuals who created and sustained a place of learning during an era of harsh discrimination and testifies to the belief in and liberating power of education as a strategy for uplift.  Though Laurel Grove’s motto promised more than it ever could fulfill and frustrations sometimes upset dreams, the school, nevertheless, offered a sanctuary and shield for black children during the nightmare of segregation and equipped students with literacy, numerical skills, black pride, and a sense of self-worth.  In doing so, it created yet one more chink in the racist system of Jim Crow.