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Date published: 2/16/2005
When Snell Training Center opened in Spotsylvania County in 1913, Sadie Coates Combs was the only instructor.
She stayed on for 41 years. In an interview before her retirement, she said she feared television would have a negative impact on students—and that was in 1953. She still believed the way to a child’s heart was to sit down and talk. “You understand them better, and they feel like they have a friend in you.” Combs was hired by the Spotsylvania Sunday School Union, a coalition of black churches that purchased land in 1909 and opened the first classroom four years later. Alfred Fairchild built the original facility. A later black school that took its place was named for John J. Wright. Those who couldn’t afford tuition or boarding paid with goods and produce. In 1915, that included a sack of flour, two pounds of bacon, a quarter-pound of tea, two pounds of sugar, a half-dozen fish, a quart of molasses, a quart of beans, a half-peck of potatoes or two heads of cabbage and a half-peck of meal.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
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