Union Grove School represented the many one-room schools for African American students found during the first half of the 20th century in Buckingham County and the surrounding area. 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 students’ parents cut and milled the lumber. At first, both students and teachers walked to the school, and the teachers were usually women from the community who had some education beyond the standard elementary level allowed to African Americans. Over time, students rode to Union Grove on segregated buses, and as more African Americans graduated from college, teacher standards were raised to include these more highly educated men and women. Yearly enrollment ranged from 20 to 35 students in grades 1 through 7, who studied reading, writing, arithmetic, history, and geography. Older students often helped younger ones while the teacher worked with another grade level. The school had no electricity, using only windows or a kerosene lamp for light and one or two woodstoves for warmth, and the bigger boys had to cut the wood. There was an outhouse but no well, so children carried buckets of water from a nearby farm. Union Grove School closed in 1964 when the last 12 one-room African American schools in Buckingham County were consolidated into new but still segregated multiroom brick elementary schools. The new schools, Stephen J. Ellis and Washington Carver, remained segregated until the county school system was completely desegregated in the fall of 1970.