MARY PEAKE, a free Negro, was asked to teach even though an 1831 Virginia law forbid the education of slaves, free blacks, and mulattoes. She held her first class, which consisted of about twenty students, on September 17, 1861 under a simple oak tree. This tree would later be known as the EMANCIPATION OAK and would become the site of the FIRST SOUTHERN READING OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, in 1863.
