Pleasant Plains School’s 150th Anniversary

Pleasant Plains Baptist Church leaders founded its Pleasant Plains School the year after the end of the Civil War.  Before then, there were no schools for people of color, enslaved or free.  The school, its church, leaders and students went on to establish other school in the area and in Virginia.  The most notable daughter school is C.S. Brown School (originally Chowan Academy and Waters Training School), the first normal or high school for people of color in the Roanoke-Chowan area.  Also many of its alumni became teachers and business people.

The first schoolhouse was replaced by the current Rosenwald building. After the school’s closing in 1950, Pleasant Plains Schoolhouse became a community center.

Chowan Discovery and Pleasant Plains Baptist Church will host a program on the school’s history, its importance and its new status on the National Registry of Historic Places.  The program begins after the 11am Sunday service.