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THURSDAY

Military Road School graduate Patricia Tyson remembers an education centered on discipline, hygiene, and academics. “If you didn’t learn that lesson, you were invited to stay with them for a few years longer,” she recalls with a chuckle. Founded by freed slaves in 1864, the school started out in a Fort Stevens barracks, and for much of the next 90 years, it may have been the only grade school in Northwest D.C. for African-American students. By the time public-school integration forced its closure, in 1954, the school had moved to a four-room red-brick Italian Renaissance-style building. Students regrouped for a 1995 reunion, which drew more than 120 and sparked the formation of the Military Road School Alumni Association. With the building—to which the District granted historical status in 1998—currently leased by a charter school, the alumni association hopes to gain control of the property and make it available for public use, perhaps partly as a museum devoted to Civil War-era Washington. Tonight, the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., hosts alumni who will share their memories of the school with an eye toward its future. “Saving an African-American Legacy: The Military Road School” begins at 6:30 p.m. at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., Heurich House Museum, 1307 New Hampshire Ave. NW. $5. (202) 785-2068. (Joe Dempsey)