Narrator: Seven hundred Blacks crowded into a makeshift tent camp in Harpers Ferry. In the filthy conditions, diseases spread, and infant fatality soared.

“We have a colored population huddled together with almost nowhere to live and nothing to live on.” —Nathan Brackett

Narrator: Following the war, 29-year-old Nathan Cook Brackett was sent to Harpers Ferry by the Freewill Baptist Home Mission Society of Maine to open schools for ex-slaves. “We have the honor of occupying the ground," he said, "where John Brown made himself immortal.” Yet, Brackett found himself unwelcome.

With help from Black residents, Brackett set up a classroom in a federal armory building in Harpers Ferry and found space for two more schools in Martinsburg and Charles Town. He requested teachers be sent from Maine.