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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.
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by clicking on the names below. |
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• Gabriel Prosser, inspired by the Bible |
• John J. Wright devoted leader, reader |
• Urbane Bass, city doctor |
• Sadie Combs, first teacher at Snell
• Philip Wyatt,
• Palmer Hayden,
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• Venus Jones, First black graduate of MWC |
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petitioning for change |
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Sources: "A Different Story" by Ruth Coder Fitzgerald; HistoryPoint.org of the Central Rappahannock Regional Library; The Free Lance-Star archives; State of Michigan Web site; African Within; The Kennedy Center; We Were Always Free By T.O. Madden Jr.; The Richmond Times-Dispatch; Life Magazine; Westmoreland County, Virginia. |
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