There’s no set schedule for when the village will be built, but the goal is to have portions of it open by spring 2023, said Mike Barber, director of Chesapeake Parks, Recreation and Tourism. The city is hoping for another $ 3 million grant from Congressman Donald McEachin, who announced a few weeks ago that the historic village was part of his application for funding for the coming fiscal year.
Efforts to preserve Cornland go back a dozen years. Randy Snead was frustrated at this time and wondered why it was taking so long. At some point he said he would like to tear it off completely. He was the type of person who liked getting things done. Snead’s wife convinced him otherwise.
“I told him we needed a reference to tell our kids how far we’ve come,” said Wanza Snead. She wanted to follow the mission of the nonprofit Cornland School Foundation: to educate future generations about the early efforts to educate African American people.
In 2010, Preservation Virginia, a Richmond-based nonprofit, listed Cornland as one of the most endangered historic sites. The group said the school was the oldest African-American school in Hampton Roads, built before the Rosenwald school movement when philanthropist Julius Rosenwald began in the early 20th
The Cornland School Foundation helped get the school listed on the National Registry of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmark Registry. Since its inception in 2011, the group, led by Councilor Ella Ward, has found around two dozen former Cornland students still living in Chesapeake. Researchers believe the school was built in 1903.