John Chavis
Another prominent African American to have graduated before slavery was outlawed was John Chavis. He was known for his role as an influential educator, a celebrated Presbyterian minister and war veteran, as reported by Documenting South. Chavis championed a program that provided private education for both White and Black children in Wake, Chatham and Granville counties. He became the face of perseverance in the fight against racial abuse and social injustice in North Carolina. In 1832, Chavis’s missionary activity ended abruptly when the federal authorities placed a ban on African Americans from preaching following a bloody slave revolt led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831.
This blot did not become an impediment to passion as an avid learner compelling him to attend the Presbyterian Washington Academy which is now known as Washington and Lee University after he relocated from North Carolina to Virginia between 1783 and 1802. When he graduated, he taught as an educator and mentored many from 1808 till his death in 1838 at his home near Oxford, North Carolina.
