Slightly tangential, but still of interest perhaps in terms of
blacks and college education in VA is this letter in 1807 concerning
a free black who sought permission to sit in on lectures in science
at William and Mary:
https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/bitstream/handle/10288/16301/
MadisonRozarro.pdf?sequence=4
Somewhat related is the story of George Greenhow, a free black who
was the janitor at William and Mary in antebellum days. Greenhow
liked to boast (with a fine sense of irony, obviously) that he was
“the only negro ever educated at William & Mary”— he had been taught
to read and write by one of the students in return for Mrs.
Greenhow’s doing the student's laundry (see a letter discovered by
my colleague Louise Kale: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Archives,
Records of the Research Department, Folder Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin,
1933:35-39: n.d., W. T. Greenhow to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., July 9,
1928. A transcript is at the Rockefeller Library).
Also somewhat related: the Colonial Williamsburg and William and
Mary Field Schools this summer have finished; analysis of the
artifacts at the presumed site of the Bray School, a school
associated with the College from 1760 for the religious education of
black children (free and enslaved), is proceeding. Nothing
definitive can yet be said, but the slate pencils, clay marbles, and
a tiny doll are at least compatible with a school's being sited where
the documents suggest it was--not finding such things would have
complicated that argument.
http://www.history.com/news/archaeologists-seek-evidence-of-oldest-
black-school
All of this related to the College's Lemon Project:
http://www.wm.edu/sites/lemonproject/?svr=web
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, College of William
and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia 23187 757-221-3932
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html
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---------------------------------
Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?....
Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the
college.
--Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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