Qualla: Augusta County Training School

Augusta County Training School: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. In 1938, Augusta County, Virginia opened a one-story frame school building at Cedar Green and called it the Augusta County Training School. The name itself was a Jim Crow euphemism - across the segregated South, white school boards labeled new Black schools as "training schools," implying vocational instruction rather than full academic curricula. The Cedar Green Training School was, in fact, simply an elementary school. But it was a milestone of a kind: the first consolidated Black school in the county larger than two rooms. The Black children of Augusta County had previously been taught, when they were taught at all, in scattered one- and two-room schools spread across the rural landscape. Cedar Green gave them a building with a central auditorium, classroom wings, and a proper portico - architecture that announced their education mattered, even within a system designed to keep that education limited.

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Augusta County Training School: What "Training School" Meant

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The phrase "training school," applied to Black schools across the segregated South in the 1920s and 1930s, was a piece of institutional language with a specific implication. White children attended high schools. Black children, according to the assumptions baked into the language...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Augusta County Training School: The Architecture of a Modest Improvement

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Augusta County Training School is a one-story frame building with a central auditorium plan - the auditorium recessed in the middle, with projecting classroom wings on either side. The entrance has a projecting portico. The roof is steeply pitched in a vernacular Neo-Classica...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Augusta County Training School: From Training School to Elementary

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. Over time, the building's official designation shifted from "Training School" to elementary school. The change reflected partly the gradual reduction of euphemism in school nomenclature, partly the reality that the building had always functioned as a regular elementary school. Bl...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain

Augusta County Training School: Why the Building Still Matters

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nyttend, Public domain. The Augusta County Training School was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 - listed not for architectural distinction (the building is plain) but for its significance in the history of African American education in rural Virginia. Most of the Black schools b...

Image: Nyttend | Public domain