We’re so excited to join the #ArchivesHashtagParty! Organized by the U.S. National Archives, the #ArchivesHashtagParty is a way for all types of archives to share their collections on social media around a fun topic. They provide a new hashtag theme each month; we bring our own collections. This month we’re celebrating #ArchivesBlackEducation, except we’re already bending the rules: we’ll post stories from our collections about Black educators and students each Friday through February for Black History Month. Here on the blog, we’ll share longer versions of those stories with more context from our collections.
Albemarle Training School (ATS) was an industrial school for African American children. As noted in this excerpt from a history of ATS, Black families were hungry for this rare educational opportunity.
Albemarle Training School Building (MSS10176-F)
Albemarle Training School excerpt
Mary Carr Greer in the first ATS yearbook (1948).
Mary Carr Greer was the daughter of Hugh and Texie Mae Hawkins Carr, farmers whose land now forms part of Ivy Creek Natural Area. Greer taught domestic science at ATS for 15 years. Greer then served as ATS principal from 1931 until 1950. During her tenure, she introduced an academic curriculum, transforming ATS from a vocational school to the first four-year high school for African Americans in County.
These images of Black student life in Albemarle are from the 1948 yearbook, ATS’s first in the Papers of the Greer-Carr Family (MSS 10176)
Albemarle Training School Library and Typing Class
Upper class students
First, second, and third grade classes
Albemarle Training School Quartets
Thank you for including this important history.
Please note that the school was known from its inception and to its end as the Albemarle TRAINING school.
Training schools were an important advancement. created in the early part of the 1900s to address the shortage of Black teachers for Black schools in the South.
Thank you
John H. Key pictured was my father…he passed away in 1995. Also after he married my mother she taught at Albemarle Training school . They met at Virginia State College. She, Alberta H. Key, later went on to become the first black teacher to integrate McIntire (sp.) School !