09/09/2026
Although Strieby School was not established for another 10 years in 1879, and it was a privately-run, Congregational church-affiliated school, it followed in and extended the tradition and value of education in the Reconstruction-era. Indeed, there was a Freedmen’s school in the area, managed by Aaron Orlando “AO” Hill Jr., a Quaker. It was referenced in the Freedmen’s Education records as Uharie Freedmen’sSchool. When it comes to our “back country” community, education is in our bones.
https://margoleewilliamsbooks.com/tag/uharie-district-freedmens-school/
In November 1865, just months after emancipation, North Carolina already had 61 schools open specifically for formerly enslaved children and adults, taught by 97 teachers working with almost nothing. 📚
The Freedmen's Bureau's education effort in North Carolina grew astonishingly fast. By February 1866 those numbers had nearly doubled, to 115 schools and 151 teachers serving more than 11,000 students. By 1868 the state counted 336 schools, 339 teachers, and over 16,000 pupils, all coordinated by superintendent F.A. Fiske, who managed funding from northern benevolent societies and organized teachers willing to come south. More than 160 schools operated across the state between 1865 and 1870, before North Carolina's new school law reshaped public education entirely.
These were often one-room buildings with students of every age crowded onto the same benches, adults and children learning to read side by side for the first time in their lives, sometimes by lamplight after a full day of work.
It is worth sitting with how fast people organized their own education the moment they were legally allowed to.
