Beneath the High School: The Lost Story of Alexandria’s Seminary School for Colored Children
Built by the Black community in 1927 and later erased by urban renewal, the Seminary School’s legacy lives on—hidden beneath the foundations of Alexandria City High School.
ALEXANDRIA, VA – On the very grounds where Alexandria City High School now stands once stood a modest, underfunded school known as the Seminary School for Colored Children. Its legacy is deeply rooted in Alexandria’s African American community and played a vital role in shaping the city’s educational history. Over the years there have been stories in the media about the school, but some citizens are asking when will there be a real marker to memorialize what happened there, in a little building built on hope, hard work, and vision.
Background
During and after the Civil War, formerly enslaved individuals and free African Americans across the country fought tirelessly for the right to education—a right long denied under slavery. Despite the Union’s victory securing basic civil liberties, systemic racism and local laws continued to block access to quality education. In the South, Jim Crow laws legally enforced segregation, mandating that Black and white children attend separate schools—though these schools were far from equal. Faced with discrimination and chronic underfunding, Black communities often took education into their own hands, raising money and donating labor to build schools for their children.
Following the Union Army’s arrival in Alexandria early in the Civil War, the city’s Black community—led largely by pioneering women like Anna Bell Davis, Mary Chase, Jane Crouch, and Harriet Jacobs—began establishing schools at an extraordinary pace. Among the first were the Columbia Street School and Saint Rose Institute in 1861. The following year saw the creation of the First Select Colored School, Beulah Normal and Theological Institute, and the Leland Warring School. In 1863, more schools emerged, including Union Town School, Sickles Barracks School, and Newtown School, followed by the Jacobs Free School in 1864. Beyond Alexandria, African American schools sprang up throughout Northern Virginia: Freedman’s Village School (1863), Falls Church Colored School (1864), a school at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Gum Springs (1865), Snowden School and Mount Pleasant School in Alexandria (1867), Vienna Colored School (1867), Frying Pan School in Herndon (1868), and Jefferson School in Arlington (1870).
Funding the Seminary School for Colored Children
In the 1920s, news spread through the Black community in Alexandria that Julius Rosenwald, president of Sears, Roebuck and Co., was offering financial support for schools serving Black children—prompting local residents to begin raising funds to qualify for his matching grants. Prominent educator and civil rights leader Booker T. Washington, known for his work at the Tuskegee Institute, also played a key role in inspiring Julius Rosenwald’s commitment to supporting Black education..
The Rosenwald Fund sent Fairfax County $900 for a small school in its Seminary district, land that was later annexed in 1952 by Alexandria City. The community in turn contributed $1,050, mostly from its Black residents. A local man, Douglass Wood, son of William Wood, a former U.S. Colored Troops soldier, donated the land. The school was engineered “by and for” the neighboring Black communities of “The Fort” and Seminary/Macedonia. In 1927, after a quick build, the Seminary School for Colored Children officially opened its doors.
Located where Alexandria City High School’s parking garage now stands, the modest three-room building was a source of immense pride for the Black community during a time when systemic segregation denied their children equal access to education.
Life at the Seminary School
Learning to read and write wasn’t easy for students attending the Seminary School. The building had no running water, so they were forced to bring up water from a neighbor’s well. Many of them lived miles away and had to walk great distances to attend. In the image above, the branching trails that lead to the school were made by morning commuters.
The school featured three classroom spaces, a small library, and an outhouse.
In its first year, it served about 27 students from Arlington and 81 by 1932 under Alexandria’s oversight—taught by three teachers covering Grades 1–7. Its mornings began with song and prayer, with students renting books for $1.50 each.
There was also outside pressure: the existence of a school meant to teach Blacks in segregated Virginia raised eyebrows and spawned threats of closure. But through it all, young African American children learned to read and write, and for this they would weather any storm.
The Seminary School’s Significance
The Seminary School was among the more than 350 Rosenwald Schools built in Virginia for African American students between 1917 and 1932—a nationwide movement that served one-third of the South’s rural Black schoolchildren.
It stood alongside earlier Black schools in the region—like Snowden School (1867) and Freedmen’s Village School (1863)—that laid the groundwork for public education in Alexandria’s African American community.
The Seminary School reached the end of its life in 1960 when school leaders sought to construct a new school on the land as part of the urban renewal trend sweeping the nation. Alexandria officials, however, under the leadership of T.C. Williams, who was the public school superintendent at the time, used the opportunity to demolish the Seminary School to build an all‑white high school, despite the 1954 Brown v. Board Supreme Court unanimous ruling which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
It wasn’t until 1965 that the T.C. Williams High School, which was erected on the debris field of the original Seminary School for Colored Children, was fully integrated.
Time to Remember
There is growing concern that the Seminary School should be given its due in the form of a formal marker on the grounds of Alexandria CIty High School.
J. Glenn Eugster, an Alexandria resident, told Zebra, “Despite the link to education history/ heritage, city and school officials have not erected a sign, and, or, recreated the school building. Letters sent to the Mayor and [and] high-level [Alexandria] City High School officials, about the idea of recognizing the School for Colored Children have not been responded to.”
There is a sign at Fort Ward Park that mentions the school and the community, but a formal historic marker for the school itself is absent on the spot where it once stood.
The Zebra reached out to Mayor Alyia Gaskins for a comment and she replied, “I am unable to provide a comment at this time. I need time to look into what Eugster is asking.”
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