The Jefferson School, founded at the end of the Civil War, played a critical role in shaping African American education in Charlottesville and continues to carry cultural significance for Black communities in town.
The school opened in 1865 by Anna Gardner, a Quaker abolitionist from Nantucket, Massachusetts, who served as its first teacher. Shortly after Gardner’s arrival, a young black woman, Isabella Gibbons asked if she could help teach and work at the school. Gardner hired her as a teacher’s aide and later as a full-fledged teacher in 1867. Initially named the “Jefferson School” after Thomas Jefferson, it was a “Freedman’s School” for the formerly enslaved.
Originally, the Jefferson School consisted of one-room, located on West Main Street at the site of the Delevan hotel, which had served as a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. The school grew quickly as Black families in Charlottesville, as in the rest of the country, emphasized the importance of education. To accommodate more students in three grades, the school was moved in 1869 to a site by the railroad station. In 1894, the school moved to a 2 1/2 story brick structure built near the corner of Fourth and Commerce Streets (now part of the school’s current parking lot). It was named Jefferson Colored Graded Elementary School and provided instruction through grade 8 until 1958 when it was demolished.
In 1924, parents and community leaders petitioned the City school board for a high school for African-American students. Until this time, Black families were forced to send their children away to high schools outside of Charlottesville or the state.
The City agreed to build a high school on the same site as the existing elementary school, and in 1926, the Jefferson High School was completed, with grades 9-11. It was one of only 10 African-American high schools in Virginia at that time. For the Black community, this marked a major victory in the decades-long struggle for school equality. Jefferson High School operated from 1926 to 1951 as Charlottesville’s first high school for Black students. In 1951, it was converted back to an elementary school for African-American students when Jackson P. Burley high school was built on Rose Hill Drive.
In 1954, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools were otherwise equal in quality. White leaders and parents strongly objected to that ruling, and in 1956, the Virginia General Assembly adopted a policy of “massive resistance.” This meant that the all-white schools throughout Virginia closed down rather than integrating as mandated by law. In Charlottesville, Lane High School and Venable Elementary were shut down in 1958 for most of a school year. Because the Jefferson School only served Black students, it stayed open during that time. It took a decade of lawsuits and struggle before the City’s schools were desegregated.
After desegregation, the Jefferson School housed various educational programs until it was closed in 1974. In 2006, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2013, the Jefferson Foundation took ownership of the building and reopened it as the “Jefferson School City Center”. It now houses the Jefferson School African-American Heritage Center, the Carver Recreation Center, and several businesses and organizations.
