CHESAPEAKE — A globe of the world before Russia became a country. An American flag with 48 stars. An oil lamp, three wooden pencils and a hand bell. A beloved pillar-like potbelly stove anchoring the center of the room. A signature from “Kathryn” penned in 1933 in a book nestled under an antique wooden school desk.
About 80 years ago, those were a few items students of the Cornland School — once called the Benefit Colored School — would see in a historic one-room schoolhouse built at the turn of the 20th century to educate young African American students in Norfolk County during the Jim Crow era of mandated segregation.
On Saturday, some returned to those days in grade school. Alumni, local and state elected leaders, community members and dozens of others met near the edge of the Great Dismal Swamp in the historic village to celebrate the revitalization of the Cornland School , now a museum anchoring a historic reminder of African Americans’ struggle for education in the form of a rustic, humble one-room school house built in 1902.