William Garland Coleman’s Thesis, p. 70-71 (1939)

Introduction

Information is taken from a Master of Arts Thesis, submitted 1939, by William Garland Coleman, a graduate student at the University of Virginia. The title is Negro Education in Fauquier County Virginia.

The full text of the thesis is available for review at the Afro American Historical Association of Fauquier County Archives. It contains over 225 pages regarding the State of Education in Fauquier’s segregated schools. In reviewing this text, the reader can sense the inadequacies in the county’s segregated schools but also a complacency in the conditions of the many schools that was to serve Fauquier’s African American students.

The Author

Mr. Coleman, was born in West Virginia in 1884, resided in Fauquier County for many years, and died 1973, in Western State Hospital in Staunton. He was buried at Green Hill Cemetery in Berryville, Va. (from Ancestry.com)

The statement below is taken from Fauquier’s Coleman Elementary School website:

Coleman Elementary School is named in honor of Mr. William Garland Coleman, a longtime teacher and administrator in the Fauquier County Public School System. For many years he served as the Principal of Marshall High School and Marshall Elementary School. Coleman opened to students in August 1969.

The Text below from pages 70-71 of the thesis is quoted exactly as written.

Morgantown School – This one-room school, on an unimproved road about two miles west of Marshall, was constructed in 1925. The house, which was of frame construction, was in good repair. Entrance to the grounds from the highway was good, but entrance to the building up a long flight of steep stairs in need of repair, was hazardous. The front door opened directly into the classroom, which was neat in spite of the lack of cloakrooms. The building had a metal roof.

The ceiled interior was painted a dingy green. Sufficient floor space was available; but, with a ceiling eight feet nine inches high, sufficient volume was not provided. Lighting was through six windows, three on each side, thirty inches above the floor. The window ratio of one to five and three tenths was almost sufficient, but the height and arrangement of the windows left much to be desired in the way of lighting.

The room was equipped with slate blackboards thirty-four inches from the floor, roller type shades, eight adjustable desks, and twelve double non-adjustable desks size three, bookshelves, globes, maps, a sand table, a graphophone, a bulletin board, and a set of printing blocks. The teacher used an oak table as a desk. A terra cotta pipe through the ceiling was used as a flue. This constituted a fire hazard that should be removed. Ventilation was poor.

Water was brought from a private spring about fifty yards away. Both toilets were neat, but the boys’ toilet had lids missing and had no shield, and the girls’ toilet was inadequately shielded.

Woods in the rear supplied an attractive background for the lot which contained about one and a half acres. Trees and flowers had been planted near the building.