A small school house on the edge of Washington DC that was part of the historic struggle to provide education to African American children has been defaced with Nazi symbols and white supremacist graffiti.
Citing “divisive language that’s being whipped up in this election”, the founder of the private school on whose grounds the building is located told the Guardian: “The timing of this attack is revealing.”
Teenagers in Loudoun County, Virginia, have been raising funds and volunteering for more than 18 months to restore what was the Ashburn Colored School between the early 1890s and the late 1950s. They plan to open the building as a museum and meeting place, and had recently stabilized the stone foundations and fitted new windows.
But on Saturday the building was found to have been covered in spray-painted pink and red swastikas and, among other phrases, the words “white power”. Vandals also painted vulgar cartoons and profanities on the worn wooden sides of the building.
“It was very upsetting,” Deep Sran, founder of the Loudoun School for the Gifted, which owns the land on which the school house stands, told the Guardian.
Sran said the vandalism was surprising because the area is affluent and relatively diverse. Virginia is a swing state but northern counties around Washington tend to be liberal and Democrat, he said, unlike more Republican-leaning southern reaches of the state.
Recent protests over police violence toward people of color and controversies over statements by and supporters of the Republican nominee, Donald Trump have brought race to the forefront in the 2016 presidential election.
“Ideas have power,” Sran said. “So I would not deny the possibility that the renewal of conversations about race that we have not had in a very long time, and the divisive language that’s being whipped up in this election are relevant. The timing of this attack is revealing.”
As part of a campus expansion, the Loudoun School for the Gifted plans to restore the historic school house, which was open from 1892 to around 1957. The building had been untouched for decades, but the restoration project has drawn fresh attention, Sran told the Washington Post.
Speaking to the Guardian, he said the vandalism had left students and teachers brokenhearted: “Our guess is that it’s someone quite local, someone who could walk there in the dark of night. The working theory is that it was juveniles that were involved.”
The graffiti might have to be left in place for some time, he said, while a way is found to remove the paint without damaging the delicate fabric of the old building.
Sran said there had been an outpouring of support since news of the vandalism emerged and pictures of the damage were posted on the project’s Facebook page.
One pupil at Loudoun School for the Gifted, Taz Foreman, who has been working on the school house project, said: “My heart kind of sank and exploded because I was thinking to myself, ‘We’ve done so much work. How dare these people come and ruin such an important place?’”
The Loudoun County sheriff, Michael Chapman, is investigating. He said the attack on the school house was reprehensible.
A former pupil of Ashburn Colored School, Louise Winzor Thomas, wrote on the Loudoun school website that in the 1950s she and her siblings had to walk many miles to reach the school house. No matter the weather, school buses were not allowed to pick up black students.
“These were very dark times for my family and other families,” she wrote.
Segregation laws meant very limited education for African American children, she wrote, as well as “limited teachers and limited second-hand books”.
Sran said the building used to be known just as the Old School, but during the restoration former pupils and their families emphasized the importance of using its actual name.
