Kumler Hall/ Brainerd Institute

Kumler Hall is the last remaining building of Brainerd Institute. Brainerd was established after the Civil War to educate Freedmen by the Board of Missions, Freedmen’s Division, of the Presbyterian Church. The Board of Missions continued to operate the school until it closed between 1939 and 1941. Brainerd was named for David Brainerd, an early Presbyterian missionary among the Indians in Massachusetts. The school offered vocational, industrial, mechanical, classical, college preparatory, and teacher training at a time when public education for local African American children was deficient or nonexistent.