 Lucasville's students into the larger Brown School, which black children attended until desegregation in 1966.
Once closed, the schoolhouse was painted red and used as a farm shed. By the time preservation work began in 2005, the structure was on the verge of collapse. Crews from Pulte Homes relocated the building and rebuilt it using some of the rafters, beams and other materials salvaged from the original structure.
Although small, the Lucasville School contains a much larger history of the educational dreams of black families during Reconstruction, said Lillian Gaskill, former chairwoman of the Historical Commission.
"It is a symbol of the importance placed on education by the African American community at that time," said Gaskill, who worked closely with Hanafin's office to save the school and establish the museum. "It's a representation of all the schools for colored children in the country."
Because it has no full-time staff, the museum will be open for limited hours on weekends, by appointment and for school groups, Hanafin said. Visitors will learn the story of Alice A. Taylor, a teacher there from 1910 to 1926, and her husband, William C. Taylor, who taught at Lucasville and at Jennie Dean's Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth.
While conducting research for the interpretive displays, county preservationist Heather A. Hembrey was able to trace, through records, the history of educational discrimination. Payroll documents from the 1870s show that black teachers were paid as much as teachers at Manassas's white-only schools and that their budgets were essentially the same. By 1911, however, the Manassas District School Board had created separate budget categories for black schools, paying African American teachers far less than their white counterparts.
"You can see the discrimination," Hembrey said.
Much of the history of the Lucasville community and its schoolhouse are still largely unknown, she said. School records and county documents can fill in only part of the story, Hembrey said. She hopes visitors will bring their memories and family records to help fill in the rest. Reconstructing the area's history is an ongoing process.
"Any one person could come forward and change the story," Hembrey said.