Woodlawn Colored School

Woodlawn Colored School

1866

Originally called the Accotink school, the name was quickly changed to the Woodlawn Colored School. It was built in the “Woodlawn Crossroads” community on what is now Fort Belvoir. The current Fort Belvoir Elementary School sits very near the position of the Woodlawn Colored School. The Antebellum Free Black community here was formed by people formerly enslaved on the Mount Vernon Estate. The community continued to grow after the Civil War with the construction of a church, cemetery, school and Odd Fellows Hall. The African American community here worked with neighboring Quakers from Pennsylvania to build the school. The community was displaced when the land was condemned to expand Fort Belvoir prior to World War II. Many members of the community relocated to nearby Gum Springs.

African American Landowners, Churches, Schools and Businesses, Fairfax County, Virginia (1860- 1900) brochure, text by Guinevere Jones, Brian Sales, Theora Austin, and Edith Sprouse, 2009.

“Educating Freedmen During Reconstruction in Fairfax County” by Debbie Robison, December 6, 2014 http://www.novahistory.org/FreedmenEducation/FreedmenEducation.htm#_edn95

“Soil Tilled by Free Men: The Formation of a Free Black Community in Fairfax County, Virginia” by Maddy McCoy and Susan Hellman, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol 125, No 1

“What’s in a Name” Woodlawn Elementary School,” Fairfax County Public Schools, https://woodlawnes.fcps.edu/about/history

“Woodlawn Cultural Landscape Historic District Nomination Form.” Virginia Department of Historic Resources

Near the intersection of Meeres Road and Woodlawn Road on Fort Belvoir

Mount Vernon