The Prince William County NAACP hosted a celebration to install a historic marker in Manassas.
According to a release, the celebration was held for Black History Month, and the sign will commemorate historic Liberty Street, which was the location of the first African American public school.
Dozens gathered on the corner of Liberty Street and Prince William Street to speak about the history of the community.
The sign reads:
In the post-Civil War years, African-Americans who were bound by a strong sense of community settled near the Brown School and Manassas Industrial School on what was then known as Liberty Avenue.
As early as 1895, African-Americans began buying tracts of land from Isaac Baldwin and building homes on Liberty Avenue and nearby Douglas Street. Carpenters, stone masons, laundresses, domestic servants, and government clerks settled here before the 1917 town ordinance that segregated housing for Manassas citizens.
Non-whites were then prohibited from erecting or occupying any property bordering any of the town’s avenues, streets or alleys, except west of Grant Avenue-South Lee Avenue and South Street (present day Prince William Street). A Supreme Court decision soon overturned segregation ordinances that were widespread across the south and in northern cities.
(other side)
In 1870, the local African-American community established the Manassas Village Colored School. First located on the corner of Liberty Street it was renamed The Brown School for a Quaker benefactor, and became the town’s second public grade school. The original building remains on Liberty Street as a private residence. A larger school, funded in part by the Julius Rosenwald Foundation, which helped establish black schools throughout the rural South was erected west of Grant Avenue in 1926 and no longer exists. This school, also name The Brown School, additionally served as a center of African-American life in Manassas.
