The St. Clare Walker School, located at Cooks Corner south of Urbanna in Middlesex County, served as a high school for Black students from 1939 through 1969 and as a middle school through 1994. Built in 1939, St. Clare Walker High School replaced a ca. 1921 central-type, frame Rosenwald school (Langston Training School, later known as Middlesex Training School). During its first three decades, the high school’s vocational and agricultural programs helped shape the campus landscape, often at the hands of students and staff who were directly involved in its construction. John Henry St. Clare Walker, long-term educator and principal, had been instrumental in promoting Middlesex education and gaining the accreditation that signaled full high school status. St. Clare Walker had served as the first principal of Middlesex Training School. In 1969, fifteen years after Brown v. Board of Education, integration took full effect in Middlesex County, and St. Clare Walker High School closed. The students moved to the former Whites-only Middlesex High School, and the campus at Cooks Corner went on to serve as St. Clare Walker Middle School for another twenty-five years. The campus has subsequently served as offices and classrooms for the Middlesex County School Board and its Department of Social Services, and it contributes to the St. Clare Walker School District.
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