Cool Civil Rights Historic Tree

Aug 16, 2007 17:58



Hampton University, an American university located in Hampton, Virginia, was first led by former Union General Samuel C. Armstrong, among the school's famous alumni is educator Dr. Booker T. Washington. Under what is now called the Emancipation Oak tree, Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes on September 17, 1861, in defiance of a Virginia law against teaching slaves, free blacks and mulattos to read or write, a law which had cut her own education short years earlier. Several years later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was read to local freedmen under the same historic tree, which is still located on the campus today, and also serves as a symbol for the modern City of Hampton.   It is designated one of the 10 Great Trees of the World by the National Geographic Society.



k, now i want to know what are the other 9 trees?!

politics, history, racism, international

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