Wormley School

Wormley School. Georgetown African American Historic Landmark. James Wormley, born a free African American in 1819, worked in his family's Hackney carriage business and became a prominent businessman and advocate for education. Georgetown spent $70 on African American education in 1862. After the war, the Republican-controlled Congress ordered the town to educate African Americans. In 1871 Wormley persuaded Congress to fund one of the first public schools for African Americans in the District of Columbia, the Sumner School. The Wormley School opened in 1885, a year after his death. Martha Louise Pope Nash and other residents were faculty members. The school remained segregated until it closed in 1952. The building later served the learning disabled before closing permanently in 1994. In 2008, it was converted to condominiums. Wormley owned a ten-acre farm at 3530 Van Ness Street, with a horse-racing track at Reno Road and Van Ness Street. He operated five boarding houses in the 1500 block of I Street. Wormley's Hotel, located at 750 15th Street NW, hosted secret meetings during the 1876 election which allowed Rutherford B. Hayes to win the presidency in exchange for federal troops' withdrawal from the South. The withdrawal ended reconstruction, meant to establish equal rights under the law and economic equality, and altered the fates of generations of Southern African Americans.