HAMPTON, Va. — Hampton, 1861: Mary Peake -- a free woman of color -- taught a class under the shade of an oak tree.
A lifelong educator, Peake instructed a growing number of escaped slaves, fleeing bondage, and the war in the South.
Eventually, Peake moved her classroom into Brown Cottage, now considered the first facility of what would one day become Hampton University.
Unfortunately, Peake would not live to see the end of the Civil War, dying of tuberculosis in 1862. But a year later, the Emancipation Proclamation would be read aloud for the first time in a southern state... underneath the same oak tree where she taught her first class.
That tree, now known as the Emancipation Oak, sits on the campus of Hampton University.