Friends of the Old Wallville School, Inc.

The school is significant as a tangible part of Calvert County's past, and affords a permanent site for public interpretation of African American education before desegregation.

The location at Calvert Elementary enriches the discussion. The site is between two active elementary schools in Prince Frederick, the County Seat located in the middle of the county. The school west of the site was constructed as a school for African Americans in the early 1960s, before segregation ended. Directly across from the site stands the Brooks Administrative Center for the Calvert County Public Schools - it still bears at least part of the name when it was known as W. Sampson Brooks High School, the black high school before desegregation, so named to honor a Calvert County native who went on to become a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. 

The Friends of the Old Wallville School keep the building open to the public one Sunday a month. Beginning in spring, 2012, the Old Wallville School will be a required field trip for all 4th graders in the county. Curriculum and interpretive planning is underway and includes staff and teachers in the Calvert County Public Schools, retired teachers, and others.  The students will visit the site for half a day then move on to visit another school from the same period that served white students. The other school has been a field-trip site for years. Combining the two in one day allows visitors and students to compare and contrast school life in the late 19th and early 20th century, to take on issues deeper than technology: moving from how far you had to walk, and keeping the fire going in the stove, to publicly discuss segregation and how the values that supported it affected everything else. At the Old Wallville School, the experience can enable conversation about the continuity of passing down black history that was lost for decades after desegregation. Retired African American teachers have agreed to serve as docents.

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