On Sept. 17, 1861, Mary Smith Peake taught her first class at a Hampton, Virginia camp for formerly enslaved refugees, beneath the shade of an oak tree. It was run by the American Mission Association.
Two years later, she read the Emancipation Proclamation to her students under this same tree, and it came to be called “Emancipation Oak.” It was the site of the first official reading of Lincoln’s declaration in the Confederate states.
The AMA would then provide Peake with a cottage to teach her students. It is said to be the first building of the Hampton Institute, now known as Hampton University.
All this and more on “Prime.”
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