Look Who it Was Random video

Hidden Figures: Mary S. Peake

2,638 views · Published 22 March 2018 · 3:18 · Indexed 21 September 2026

Channel: Sensei Aishitemasu · 2018 · Entertainment

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Educator Mary Smith Peake (1823-1862) secretly taught formerly enslaved Black Americans of all ages, in her home in Hampton, Virginia. The first teacher hired by the American Missionary Association, she was also associated with its later founding of Hampton University in 1868.

Born to a free Black woman in Norfolk, Virginia, Peake was sent to Alexandria at the age of six to be educated. Living with her aunt Mary Paine, she studied for about ten years, before the United States Congress enacted a law prohibiting free Blacks in the District of Columbia from being educated. The new law closed all schools for free blacks in the city.

At age sixteen, Peake returned home to live her mother, and she began to secretly teach enslaved and free Black Americans to read and write. This was a tremendous risk in the face of the law passed in 1831 that forbade the education of any person of African descent. The law was passed as a direct response to the Nat Turner Rebellion. Peake continued educating Black Americans despite the law because she believed "education was important to the race.” (Which is a direct quote.)

In 1847 her mother married Thompson Walker and the family moved to Hampton, where they bought a house. She continued secretly teaching throughout the 1850s, and she was one of a number of black women whose teaching was, a few years later, officially sanctioned by the Union army as the United States entered the Civil War.

During the Civil War, the Peake family home was torched by Confederate forces, and after the attack, many Black Americans sought refuge nearby at Fort Monroe. Peake started a school near the fortress, on the grounds of what would become Hampton Institute (later Hampton University). In just a matter of days, Peake’s attendance increased from six students to fifty. As a dedicated educator, she created a school for adult learning in the evenings despite her failing health. In 1862, she died of tuberculosis. Her school was one of the first of its kind, and a tremendous feat in the American South, during the Civil War. 

#MaryPeake #HiddenFigures

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Links: 

'Mary Smith Peake:'
https://www.nps.gov/people/mary-smith-peake.htm

'African American Trailblazers - Mary Peake:'
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/trailblazers/2010/honoree.asp?bio=2

'Hampton’s Mary Peake Led 1st Day Of School For Freedmen On This Day In 1861:'
https://newsone.com/2720458/mary-smith-peake/

'Honoring women who mothered Hampton's children - The legacy of Mary S. Peake and Janie Porter Barrett:'
https://pilotonline.com/news/local/history/article_1588157e-153a-526e-840e-7ce9853cee75.html

'She led the first educational effort on the grounds of modern-day Hampton University:'
http://theweeklychallenger.com/she-led-the-first-educational-effort-on-the-grounds-of-modern-day-hampton-university/

'The Civil War comes to “Mary S. Peake, the Colored Teacher at Fortress Monroe,” Part 1:'
http://pastispresent.org/2011/good-sources/the-civil-war-comes-to-“mary-s-peake-the-colored-teacher-at-fortress-monroe”-part-1/comment-page-1/

'History of American Women - Mary Peake:'
http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2014/11/mary-peake.html

Mary S. Peake (Wikipedia):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_S._Peake

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