Stafford Training School

Stafford Training School, later known as H. H. Poole School, was built in 1939 by the Public Works Administration after African American parents raised money to buy the land. During segregation, it was the only school in Stafford County that offered black students an education beyond seventh grade. After an earlier attempt failed, two young students from the school, Doretha and Cynthia Montague, successfully entered the all-white Stafford Elementary School on 5 Sept. 1961, seven years after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Afterward, school systems in the Fredericksburg region desegregated.

Virginia · United States