W&M Bray School Lab

10/16/2026

📣 Slate Seminar Begins in ONE WEEK ! 📣

Join us Friday, October 23rd & Saturday, October 24th
William & Mary School of Education
301 Monticello Avenue, Williamsburg, VA 23185

👉 To register: https://go.wm.edu/Q2fGxx

Slate Seminar will feature such sessions as:

• Following Freedom’s Trail in the New Republic: Tracing the Descendants of Bray School Scholars from Williamsburg to Wisconsin
• Preserving The Reservation: Place, Memory, and the Descendant Community
• Documenting the New Republic: Preserving Community History in Special Collections
• Bray School Descendants in a New World

The Slate Seminar is a track within the “For 2026” conference series co-hosted by William & Mary, the Omohundro Institute, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Slate Seminar sessions illuminate or align with the history and legacies of the Williamsburg Bray School (1760-1774) and the mission of the Bray School Lab to study, preserve, and disseminate broadly the Williamsburg Bray School story.

10/15/2026

10/14/2026

📣 Slate Seminar | Registration is Open! 📣

Space is filling up. Have you registered yet? Join us Friday, October 23rd & Saturday, October 24th
William & Mary School of Education
301 Monticello Avenue, Williamsburg, VA 23185

👉 To register: https://go.wm.edu/Q2fGxx

The Slate Seminar is a track within the “For 2026” conference series co-hosted by William & Mary, the Omohundro Institute, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Slate Seminar sessions illuminate or align with the history and legacies of the Williamsburg Bray School (1760-1774) and the mission of the Bray School Lab to study, preserve, and disseminate broadly the Williamsburg Bray School story.

10/02/2026

📣 Slate Seminar is Back | Registration is Now Open! 📣

Join us Friday, October 23rd & Saturday, October 24th
William & Mary School of Education
301 Monticello Avenue, Williamsburg, VA 23185

👉 To register: https://go.wm.edu/Q2fGxx

The Slate Seminar is a track within the “For 2026” conference series co-hosted by William & Mary, the Omohundro Institute, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Slate Seminar sessions illuminate or align with the history and legacies of the Williamsburg Bray School (1760-1774) and the mission of the Bray School Lab to study, preserve, and disseminate broadly the Williamsburg Bray School story.

09/29/2026

“We believe descendants should not simply be the subjects of research.”

09/28/2026

This past Saturday, the DEC-VA and community partners came together to celebrate the 2026 Descendant's Day Symposium in Charlottesville, VA. The title of this year’s symposium "Still Here: Black Survival, Joy, and Community at America’s 250th." Bray School Lab genealogist Elizabeth Drembus attended.

The program was full of rich conversations on such topics as
• Rewriting the National Narrative at America’s 250th
• The Power of Coalition-Building
• Black Women as Keepers of Collective Memory
• Trauma-Informed Care
• Repair and Institutional Change: Descendant Activism and Engagement.

The powerful keynote conversation "From Ancestors to Reparations: Centering Black Descendants in the 250th" was led by none other than Nicka Sewall-Smith and Nikole Hannah-Jones. It was an incredible day full of inspiring conversations and being together in community.

For more information on the incredible work being done by DEC-VA, check out their website https://www.decva.org/.