Chowan Academy and Calvin S. Brown

In the mid eighteen eighties, Calvin Scott Brown, pastor of Pleasant Plains Baptist Church in Hertford County, opened Chowan Academy to educate Black students in a region where opportunities were nearly nonexistent. Brown had just graduated from Shaw University and arrived in Winton at the urging of Shaw's founder. He secured funding from the Home Mission Society of New York and ran the school for decades, often returning his own salary to keep the institution running.

Chowan Academy grew into Waters Training School and eventually the Calvin S. Brown School, recognized as the first standalone high school for Black students in North Carolina. Brown also served fifty years as secretary and president of the Black Baptist State Convention.

He died in nineteen thirty-six, having devoted his entire career to education in this corner of eastern North Carolina.