In 1830-31 North Carolina passed laws which made it illegal to teach those where enslaved to learn how to read and write. Two years after the ending of slavery, Lewis Hege, Alexander Volger (Gates), and Robert Waugh, Black lay leaders in the African Moravian Church in Salem, led the effort to build the first school for free Blacks in Salem. In Winston, the Depot Street School was opened in 1887 and became the first public school for Blacks.
Fairview (now Ashley Elementary) and Skyland (now closed) Schools were historically white schools. because of the change in the residential patterns of the neighborhood served by the schools they became predominantly Black or all Black. Skyland was located on East Fifth Street.
The Colored Baptist Orphanage opened around 1905 to serve homeless children in the Belview area of Winston-Salem. The name was changed to the Memorial Industrial School in the early 1920s. In 1928 the school moved eight miles north and operated until 1971, providing students with academic as well as agricultural and domestic education.