Oak Grove Colored School

A quilt and other handmade items are strung across the blackboard of a classroom in the Oak Grove Colored School in Brunswick County. A flag-draped portrait of Booker T. Washington, a renowned African American educator, hangs on the wall. Jackson Davis, the Virginia field agent for the General Education Board from 1915 to 1929, took this photograph, one of about 6,000 he made documenting the conditions of rural schools and the industrial education of African Americans.

Citation: Jackson Davis Papers, 1906–1947, Accession #3072, #3072-a, Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.