Jennie Dean and the school that built Black self-reliance

Jennie Dean and the school that built Black self-reliance

The former enslaved girl who turned determination, faith, and community grit into an educational lifeline for Black youth in northern Virginia. Jennie Dean entered the world on a Virginia plantation, born enslaved in the late 1840s or early 1850s. Her early years unfolded in a log cabin on Marble Hill, a small structure that stood through the First and Second Battles of Manassas. Her father, Charles Dean, was literate and passed that gift on to …