Live Oaks: A Gathering Place

Live Oaks: A Gathering Place. . , Welcome to the Reading Grove , This space provides a place to meet, rest, read, and reflect. Live oaks have long harbored gatherings, from religious services and classes to community celebrations., Witness Trees , Trees that were present at key events in American history are known as "witness trees." Do you have a special tree in your community? Does it have a name? If not, what would you call it?, [Captions:] , Live oaks provided a sheltered space for enslaved African Americans to meet and practice their religion., Right "The Emancipation Oak" on the campus of Hampton University, a historically black university in Hampton, Virginia, was the site of one of the first Southern readings of President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. As in the past, live oak trees, like this one, continued to provide shade for resting and reading., Left During the Civil War, Mary Smith Peake taught newly freed African American men and women in the shade of the Emancipation Oak, despite a Virginia law forbidding the education of African Americans. Peake's classes laid the foundation of what would become Hampton University., Right The 65-foot-high "Angel Oak" on Johns Island near Charleston, South Carolina, is believed to be one of the oldest living things east of the Mississippi. During segregation, its branches offered shade and shelter to black and white residents alike., Left In the 1910s and '20s, Civil rights activist and teacher Septima P. Clark took her students on field trips to the Angel Oak tree. And later, when segregation was at its height, the ground remained open to everyone.