Stafford Training School

Stafford Training School, later known as H. H. Poole School, was constructed in 1939 by the Public Works Administration after African American parents raised money to buy the land. During the segregation era, this was the only school in Stafford County offering black students an education beyond seventh grade. After an earlier attempt failed, two young students from this school, Doretha and Cynthia Montague, successfully entered the all-white Stafford Elementary School on 5 Sept. 1961, seven years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision ruled school segregation unconstitutional. Thereafter school systems in the Fredericksburg region desegregated.