A 1922 Classroom
*On this date, in 1897, the St. Francis de Sales School was established. Located in Powhatan County, Virginia, it was built to educate young Black and Indigenous girls in America.
The school was located near the James River and the Appomattox River on the Belmead plantation. Katharine Drexel opened St. Francis with a curriculum focused on academics and domestic science. The three-story school was a simpler Romanesque-influenced U-shaped building with a tall tower, many buttresses, and verandas.
St. Francis was an important education center for young African American and Native American women until it closed in 1970.
