The First African American School in Appomattox

The First African American School in Appomattox. Appomattox, Virginia. , The first school for African Americans in Appomattox County began near here. Before the Civil War's end, educational opportunities in rural Virginia were often limited for White residents and practically nonexistent for African Americans, enslaved or free. In Virginia, it was illegal to teach an enslaved person to read. Change marched to Appomattox in the form of General Ulysses S. Grant's armies, including more than 5,000 African American United States Colored Troops who helped block the escape route of Confederate forces., In the war's aftermath, the federal government created the Freedmen's Bureau, in part to create educational opportunities for the newly freed people. Here in Appomattox, the first Freedmen's Bureau school opened in October 1865. Originally called the U.S. Grant School and later the Plymouth Rock School, this humble institution enrolled nearly 100 students in 1866. The school and its teacher, Charles McMahon from Massachusetts, faced and survived multiple threats and acts of violence., Despite these challenges to formal education, White and Black state Republican congressmen required the state's new Reconstruction constitution to provide public education for all races. Created in 1870, the new public school system dramatically increased the number of White and Black children attending school, though a century of school segregation followed.