In 1890, about thirty years after slavery was abolished, a schoolhouse for African Americans was established in King and Queen County. J.C. Graves, the pastor of New Mount Zion Baptist Church, served as a schoolteacher for decades.
The Mount Zion Baptist Church of King and Queen County, Virignia.
When the schoolhouse closed in 1937, the New Mount Zion Baptist Church bought the school and turned it into the J.C. Graves Musuem in the honor of their former pastor. Currently, the musuem highlights the legacy of J.C. Graves and the history of African American education in the county.
I'm a Virginia historian and legal expert who is related to individuals who rode on the Mayflower ship, American founding father George Mason IV, three Union veterans from the U.S. Civil War, two of whom marched with General Sherman to Atlanta, two Confederate veterans, and President Theodore Roosevelt’s and Franklin Roosevelt’s family.
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