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How did Mary Lumpkin help turn a former slave jail into a school?

In 1867, Mary Ann Lumpkin rented the former jail property to Nathaniel Colver for a school for freed people. Virginia Union University’s history places that school within its origins. The site’s transformation involved her decision, teachers, students, and a wider community, while the buildings still carried the physical traces of enslavement.

3–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • What changes when this history is told through the people who made education possible, as well as the institution that followed?
  • How do surviving records distinguish Mary Lumpkin's contribution from later accounts centered on the school's founders?

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