The Williamsburg Bray School occupied a building in the colonial town from roughly 1760 to 1774, educating Black children — both enslaved and free — in reading and religious instruction. The school was funded by the Associates of Dr Bray, an English Anglican charity with educational interests in the colonies, and was one of a small number of such institutions operating in pre-Revolutionary America.
The building that housed the school was identified through archaeological and documentary research and is now the subject of an active preservation project. The Bray School story is central to Colonial Williamsburg's recent effort to tell a more complete history of 18th-century Virginia — one that includes the experience of the enslaved majority, not just the planter class that dominated the earlier presentation of colonial history. The site is accessible as part of Colonial Williamsburg admission.