Mary Smith Peake was an American teacher and humanitarian born in Hampton Virginia. Among a class of affluent free Black aristocrats during the Civil War she is best known for starting a school for the children of the formerly enslaved beginning in the fall of 1861. Under what became known as the Emancipation Oak tree in present-day Hampton near Fort Monroe she helped to educate those who had escaped from Southern plantations to take refuge at Freedom's Fortress. Peake was the first Black teacher hired by the American Missionary Association. She was also credited with inspiring the establishment of Hampton College in 1868, which is now Hampton University, one of America's first Historically Black Colleges or Universities, an HBCU. The Emancipation Oak still stands today and is designated as a national historic landmark by the Department of the Interior and one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society.
https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-smith-peake.htm
The Joy Trip Project celebrates Black History Month. The Unhidden Minute is part of the Unhidden Podcast Project supported through a National Geographic Explorer Grant from the National Geographic Society, with the cooperation of the National Park Service. This series elevates the untold stories of Black American history.
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Mary Smith Peake