The Lucy F. Simms School is a school building at 620 Simms Avenue in

Harrisonburg, Virginia Harrisonburg is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Shenandoah Valley region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is also the county seat of the surrounding Rockingham Cou ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on February 11, 2004. Lucy F. Simms (born 1855, died July 10, 1934) was a former slave who went on to become an influential teacher in Harrisonburg. The school was located in north-eastern Harrisonburg, on the site of a previous school, the Effinger Street school. It was

co-educational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

but was only available to African American children. The site had housed a school from around 1880 on what had previously been the Hilltop estate of the Gray family. The Lucy F. Simms school was built in 1938 and closed from 1966 when American schools finally became integrated and so open to all children. After the school's closure, the building remained empty until it was re-opened in 2005 as the Lucy F. Simms Continuing Education Center.

References

External links

*http://www.heritagecenter.com/Web_Pages/Museum/Collection/blackedu/lucysims.html *Lucy Simms oral history : background paper and transcripts Getachew, Wondwossen 2000 School buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia School buildings completed in 1939 Schools in Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Harrisonburg, Virginia Brick buildings and structures in Virginia {{HarrisonburgVA-NRHP-stub