One-Room Schoolhouse

One-Room Schoolhouse. Buckingham, Virginia. , Union Grove School is representative of the many one-room schools for African-American students in Buckingham County and throughout the area. The African-American members of the community built Union Grove around 1925, and like most schools, it was named after a local church. An African-American farmer and storeowner donated the land, and the parents of students cut and milled the lumber., At first, both students and teachers walked to school. The teachers were usually women of the community who had some education beyond the standard elementary level allowed African Americans. But as time passed, students rode to Union Grove on segregated buses, and as more African Americans graduated college, teacher standards were raised to include these more highly educated men and women., Yearly enrollment varied between 20 to 35 students in grades one through seven. Students were taught the basic subjects of reading, writing, arithmetic, history and geography. Older students often helped the younger students while the teacher was busy with another grade level. There was no electricity, just windows or a kerosene lamp for light and one or two woodstoves for warmth for which the bigger boys had to cut the wood. There was an outhouse but no well, and children had to carry buckets of water from a nearby farm., Union Grove School was closed in 1964 when the last 12 one-room African-American schools in Buckingham County were consolidated into new, but still segregated, multi-classroom brick schools. The new elementary schools, Stephen J. Ellis and Washington Carver, remained segregated until complete desegregation of the county school system in the fall of 1970., (sidebar) , (Right) At first, students and teachers walked to school but eventually rode on buses similar to this one., (Bottom Right) One-room log schoolhouse in Buckingham County, c. 1910s. Lumber on grounds for constructing a new building., (Below) Interior of a one-room log schoolhouse in Brunswick County, c. 1910s. The walls and ceiling of this schoolroom were used as chalkboards and the students sat on benches. Schools had no electricity and were heated by one or two woodstoves., (Far Right) A one-room schoolhouse in Virginia., Bus photo courtesy of Virginia State University Archives. All other photos courtesy of The Jackson Davis Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library.