(chanting and clapping music) (gentle piano music) - I've spent a great deal of time studying the textbooks that were used at the Bray School.

The one textbook we know definitively written by the Bray Associates was called "Letter to an American Planter."

It's essentially a response letter in 1771 to the last 11 years of Bray schools operating in Virginia.

It's very early on in the textbook, and it says, quote, "I would recommend you have your slaves instructed in the Christian religion as the best means to reconcile them to their state of servitude.

And I remember reading that and thinking, what?

(chuckles) How do I process that?

(chanting and clapping music) My school is paid for by the Bray Associates, the third largest charity in the Church of England.

They are not concerned with arithmetic, they are concerned with making an obedient slave using the doctrines of the Church of England.

Now, have I taught arithmetic?

Of course I have.

Have I taught sewing and knitting to the girls to make them more useful?

Of course.

But you see the contradiction of my classroom, do you not?

Depending on who you are talking to.

The intention of why I am teaching dictates as much as what I teach.

(gentle piano music) - This building is giving us lots and lots of information about what it looked like and how it was used.

And this is the original stair for the building, so this is what the teacher would've walked up and down.

This is the earliest known list of students here at the Bray School.

This is from 1762.

So it lists 30 children.

So you see the ages here, so three up to 10.

So what you're seeing in this room is a restored room back to 1760, when the school first started.

In fact, the school started in this building, September 29th, 1760.

This is the 1760s floor, 1760 nails still holding the floorboards in place.

And these are the floors that the children walked on, the teacher walked on, and everyone else that ever occupied the building from the time it was built to present day.

- Ann Wager and I disagree on 99.99% of things.

And so it's very interesting, and it's a great privilege, but it's also a great challenge to portray somebody who has totally diametrically opposed opinions.

One of the reasons I applied for the position is because they really expect you not only to be grounded in the history, but be prepared to go to places that will likely make your guest uncomfortable, or in the best case scenario, make them think critically.

(gentle piano music continues) Very often, enslavers would try to reclaim what they perceive as their property, enslaved people, through the newspaper, called "runaway ads."

And one of the ads that was published was published for a young boy, about 18 or 19 years old, named Isaac B, he'd gone to the school when he was around eight or nine.

And in this ad, his enslaver states, quote, "He thinks he has a right to his freedom," end quote.

- This is a day of history.

It's a day to remember scholars, a day to remember the challenge of slavery, and a day to remember the resiliency of people.

And it's a day to remember that we have to embrace our history, no matter how complex or how contradictory.

- We're descendants of the Ashbury family, who some of our ancestors went to the Bray School.

- I was surprised when I found out that that was why the school was there, that we would, not to be to free them, but to keep them as servants, as slaves.

♪ Sit on down, sit down ♪ (attendees clap) (cheerful music) ♪ Sit down and take your rest ♪ ♪ You have to lay your head ♪ ♪ Upon the Savior's breast ♪ - Virginia Laws did not explicitly prohibit the education of enslaved people until after Gabriel's Rebellion in 1800.

The Journal Assembly then made literacy more difficult, because it was believed that if slaves learned to read and write, they could then more easily navigate white society, and be exposed to ideas of liberty and freedom, which in turn would make them more likely to understand their condition, and then more likely to rebel.

♪ He's my Savior and my God ♪ ♪ Sit down, sit down ♪ ♪ Sit down, sit down ♪ ♪ Oh sit down ♪ (strident music) - [Announcer] This has been "Revolution 250, Stories from the First Shore."

To learn more about this into other events of the Revolutionary Age of America, visit whro.org/usa250.