ORELL COLORED SCHOOL MEDAL

This morning, I woke up to an excited press release from Colonial Williamsburg. Researchers there have identified Virginia's oldest extant school for African-American children. Opened in 1760 at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, the Bray School was one a series of schools opened in the American colonies at the behest of a group called "The Associates of Dr. Bray." Thomas Bray, an English cleric, founded two literacy organizations, one called the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the other the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Bray's followers attempted to open schools for enslaved children in Georgia and South Carolina but, entirely unsurprisingly, their plans were not welcomed.

Franklin became a supporter of Bray's ideas and helped to open a school in Philadelphia in 1757. Encouraged by its success, he prodded authorities to open similar schools in New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Virginia opened two Bray Schools, one in Williamsburg in 1760 and one in Fredericksburg in 1765. While the Fredericksburg school lasted just five years (and was unpopular with local enslavers), the one in Williamsburg remained open until 1774.

And today, Colonial Williamsburg announced that the structure still exists (on the campus of the College of William and Mary) and would be moved to Williamsburg's historical area, closer to where it was initially, for renovation and historical interpretation.

The medal illustrated below was awarded by the Louisville Times to a Wilhelm Rowan of the Orell Colored School in Louisville, Kentucky. Orell made the papers in 1933, six years after this medal was presented "for effort," when 15-year-old Coy Miller won the county spelling bee. Young Wilhelm doesn't turn up in census records under the name engraved on this medal, but I fear he is the William Rowen, born 1915, who is found in the 1940 census as an inmate at the Jefferson County Jail. He would have been 12 when he received this medal for academic excellence. For reasons unknown, he dropped out in 8th grade. And at age 25, he was locked up.

William Rowen's story wasn't unusual then, and it isn't unusual now.

The Mullins School in Marion County, South Carolina was a Rosenwald school, funded with donated money from a Northern philanthropist. First constructed in 1924, then rebuilt with Rosenwald money in 1953, the Mullins School was known as Palmetto High School when it finally integrated in the 1970-71 school year, like schools all over South Carolina, more than 15 years after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Black high schools statewide were turned into middle schools when the student bodies of the two high schools merged, a tacit admission that their facilities were subpar. When towns like Mullins had two high schools that merged in 1970-71, the new single high school was typically about the same size as the previous segregated Black high school, as white parents pulled their children from public schools to enroll them in private "segregation academies" which sprung up during the Civil Rights Era program of "massive resistance" to segregation.

To read the complete article, see:
Black History Month, 2021. Day 25. (https://www.facebook.com/john.kraljevich/posts/10226170663592876)

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To read the complete articles, see:
Black History Month, 2021. Day 21. (https://www.facebook.com/john.kraljevich/posts/10226137351520095)
Black History Month, 2021. Day 22. (https://www.facebook.com/john.kraljevich/posts/10226152035607188)
Black History Month, 2021. Day 24. (https://www.facebook.com/john.kraljevich/posts/10226161964735410)
Black History Month, 2021. Day 26. (https://www.facebook.com/john.kraljevich/posts/10226187040162280)
Black History Month, 2021. Day 28. (https://www.facebook.com/a.kraljevich/posts/10226191384110876)

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
1971 BLACK AMERICAN DAY MEDAL (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n06a33.html)
THE NEW HARLEM OF SEATTLE TRADE TOKEN (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n07a29.html)
THE LIBERIAN EXODUS (https://www.coinbooks.org/v24/esylum_v24n08a30.html)

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