Barrett-Peake Foundation to honor namesake
Peake remembered for teaching kids of ‘emancipated’ slaves to read and write
HAMPTON — The Barrett-Peake Heritage Foundation will honor the memory of namesake Mary S. Peake on Monday with a wreath laying ceremony at her family plot in Hampton.
Members will meet at Elmerton Cemetery on Poplar Street at 4 p.m. for a moment of silence and reflection. Peake was born in Norfolk and died on Feb. 22, 1862. She is remembered for teaching children of “emancipated” slaves how to read and write when it was forbidden by law. Peake taught during the Civil War under what became the Emancipation Oak at now present-day Hampton University. She also founded the Daughters of Zion.
A second namesake, Janie Porter Barrett, was a social reformer and educator. A Georgia native, Barrett created the Virginia
Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs in the early 1900s. The club is an affiliate of a national association that helped African American women with civil rights issues and injustice. Barrett was its first president.
The late Mary T. Christian, a former Virginia state delegate, and Colita Fairfax, a historiographer and professor with Norfolk State University co -founded the nonprofit. Its headquarters is at 123 E. Pembroke Avenue — the federation’s former state headquarters. The nonprofit is renovating the site into a museum and cultural center.
The foundation also will honor Peake’s husband, Thomas Peake, who is buried at Elmerton. Thomas Peake was Union Army spy and one of the first trustees of First Baptist Church. He rose to become one of Elizabeth City County’s first Black Constitutional Officers, Fairfax said.
The ceremony is open to the public. Additional information is available by emailing Colita Fairfax at: president@barrett-peake.org.
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